Presentation abstract
Between 2004 and 2014, companies of various sizes and origins have flocked to the Zambian and Congolese copperbelts to take over the assets of public enterprises and develop new mining and industrial projects. My talk will develop the core theoretical assumptions of a collective and comparative research project on the changes that these new investors have brought to the organization of labour in these areas historically marked by corporate paternalism. I will come back on the labour management practices that former mining companies put in place in the 20th century, to show that the organization of labour is less the result of a deliberate strategy, than of a situational adaptation to various constraints.
This analysis will provide the basis for studying how new investors in the 21st century adapt their managerial models to the conditions they find locally, and influence broader family, class, and political dynamics in both countries. My contention is that they do not so much break with the corporate paternalism of the past as give it new directions.