ABSTRACT
Contracting global markets for African smallholder agricultural exports have triggered large-scale processes of de-agrarianization and a search for alternative sources of income for hard-pressed rural households since the late 1970s (Bryceson 2000). In the search, some have literally struck gold. Little, however, has been written about artisanal miners’ mobility and their rush to mine following a mineral strike. Neither the artisanal mining literature nor the burgeoning field of migration studies has focused on the migration patterns of African artisanal miners. This contrasts with the deluge of analyses and legends associated with gold rushes of the past, notably those occurring in Northern California in the mid-19th century and the Canadian Yukon five decades later (Berton 1994; Brands 2003). Migrants flocked to these locations in the hopes of becoming wealthy.
