ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a comparative assessment of shifting patterns of labor migration to industrial mine areas in Central and Southern Africa. All studied mine areas started out relying on a circular male migrant labor force and, to various extents, on organized, sometimes forced, recruitment. While the Congolese state-backed copper mining company ceased international recruitment and stabilized its workforce in the 1920s, the Northern Rhodesian state and copper companies continued to rely on voluntary labor circulation, and fully embraced stabilization only from the late 1940s. South Africa’s gold mines depended on organized recruitment in foreign countries to continuously replenish its transient workforce until the 1970s. Explanations for the differences in timing of stabilization (and scope of organized recruitment) include the geological suitability of the ores for mechanized extraction and the relative costs of foreign labor, but also the state’s stances which were informed by both economic and political considerations.
