Original article
Determinants of place attachment among mineworkers: Evidence from South Africa

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2021.100943Get rights and content

Highlights

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    Research generally depicts place attachment in a positive light.

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    Our study suggests attachments in mining are complex and multi-faceted.

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    Attachments can create financial lock-ins with damaging long-term effects.

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    Policies that induce place attachment ought to be treated with caution.

Abstract

The authors argue that, given (i) the unpredictability of the mining lifecycle and (ii) global pressure to transition out of coal, researchers must take a more critical perspective on place attachment and its consequences. Research generally depicts place attachment in a positive light. The conventional understanding is that place attachment brings stability, creates assets and helps society to take on and complete long-term projects. We use evidence from case studies to question the appropriateness of this conventional wisdom and whether it should be applied blindly in the mining industry. A policy of encouraging place attachment will be counterproductive if living standards and access to quality service provision cannot be maintained. Unchecked, place attachments can create financial lock-ins that lead to long-term economic damage. The likelihood of eventual mine closure means that policies that aim to induce place attachment to encourage stability, long-range planning and asset development may not be appropriate for all mining communities. While we agree that some measure of place attachment should be encouraged through social policy throughout the mine's lifecycle, we do not agree that place attachment should be constructed as an outcome in its own right.

Introduction

Between the end of the First World War and the mid-1980s, mining companies created residential settlements as a means to offer mine-owned housing to their workforce. This was considered a necessity given that mines were in remote locations with little or no public infrastructure. And there are cases where this historical approach continues – most notably in mining regions of Africa. Since the mid-1980s, the mining industry has revisited its position on the management of mining towns. Several factors have contributed to this change (Marais et al., 2018). In some states in Australia, changes in tax legislation made it unviable for employers to provide housing fringe benefits or for employees to receive them. Fly-in-fly-out arrangements (mostly in Australia) reduced the need for permanent settlements close to the mining operations. Global pressure on the industry to focus on core business and relinquish peripheral activities like housing was also a factor driving these policy changes.

Consequently, the industry started to support a process known as ‘town normalisation’. In principle, this equates to democratically elected councils governing towns and delivering services ‘as normal’. By 2002, the mining industry had formally endorsed normalisation (MMSD, 2002), which involved handing over the management of company towns and transferring housing that had been financed and constructed by the company to individual households. ‘Collaborative, community-level planning’ became the new catchphrase. Mine-provided amenities were withdrawn.

New housing arrangements have helped mineworkers to acquire housing assets, which in turn creates stability over the short to medium term. These incentives are often described in the literature as encouraging place attachment. However, mining is by nature finite, and the industry's dependence on volatile global markets increases the likelihood of decline and closure. For mineworkers in remote locations, the chance of finding work outside the mining industry, with comparable remuneration and access to services, is slim. Decline and closure diminishes the value of these positive incentives as mineworkers lose their jobs. The policy conundrum should be apparent: is it appropriate to encourage place attraction by providing better living conditions near the mine and giving mineworkers a significant degree of local control, when mine closure will turn the attraction into a handicap? The general literature views place attachment as a distinctly positive phenomenon and both the industry and the government implement policies that actively foster place attachment during periods of mining growth (Svobodova, et al 2021).

We argue that, given (i) the unpredictability of the mining lifecycle (Owen & Kemp, 2018) and (ii) global pressure to transition out of coal (Svobodova, et al, 2020), researchers must take a more critical perspective on place attachment and its consequences. A policy of encouraging place attachment will be counterproductive if living standards and access to quality service provision cannot be maintained. We make the case that attachments to specific places can create financial lock-ins that lead to long-term economic damage. The likelihood of eventual mine closure means that policies that aim to induce place attachment to encourage stability, long-range planning and asset development may not be appropriate for all mining communities. To help develop appropriate policy, research needs to identify the factors that cause mineworkers to develop place attachment and differentiate the factors according to their known positive or negative long-term effects.

Two sets of determinants are examined. First, we want to know which settlement-related factors contribute to place attachment in the South African mining towns. Secondly, because of the often remote locations of mining areas, we are interested in whether improved working conditions in any way influence place attachment. An understanding of this possible relationship is important to get a complete picture of how positive incentives affect place attachment in mining towns. In this paper we thus consider normalisation, better living conditions and improved work environments for mineworkers in an integrated way.

The determinants of place attachment among mine employees in two large mining towns in South Africa, Emalahleni (coal) and Rustenburg (platinum) are investigated. We ask which settlement-related factors and which work-related factors contribute to place attachment. The paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of our findings in the context of potential mine decline or closure.

Section snippets

Place attachment and resource-based communities

The term ‘place attachment’ conventionally refers to a positive relationship between people and the place where they live. This multi-layered concept has drawn attention from a range of disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, geography, planning and architecture. Cognate terms likewise exist in abundance: ‘community attachment’, ‘place identity’, ‘a sense of place or community’, ‘the bonding of individuals and their important places’, ‘place dependence’, ‘belonging’ and ‘a social identity’ (

Housing and mining in South Africa

Historically, poor working and living conditions were common on the South African mines. The system of migrant labour meant that most black employees had to live in high-density, single-sex hostels near the mines, with from four to ten men sharing a small bedroom. These conditions were a breeding ground for tuberculosis and other diseases (Murray et al., 2011). In contrast, the white workforce lived mainly in comfortable mine-owned houses. By the mid-1980s this had started to change. Black

The living environment

We surveyed two South African mining towns: Emalahleni, a coal-producing region, in 2017, and Rustenburg, a platinum producing region, in 2018 (see Table 1 for a comparison).

Emalahleni is the centre of coal mining in South Africa. Coal mining began here in 1890 and soon thereafter the government proclaimed Witbank (today Emalahleni) as a town in 1903 (Campbell et al., 2017). The Johannesburg-Delagoa Bay (today Maputo) railway line was crucial in the development of the town. It ensured the cheap

Methods

For the two study sites, we trained community fieldworkers to collect data using an extensive household questionnaire. In both towns we aimed to obtain representative samples. This effort was more successful in Rustenburg, though the sample under-represented higher-income households. In Emalahleni, we had to increase the number of mineworkers in the sample. We interviewed 945 households in Rustenburg, 383 with mineworkers, and 933 households in Emalahleni, 567 with mineworkers. After

The living environment

Approximately two-thirds of the respondents (64% in Rustenburg and 72% in Emalahleni) expressed a preference to stay in the area. These high percentages are partially the result of mining companies appointing more local labour. We suggest two contrasting interpretations of these relatively high percentages. First, despite the large preference to stay, at least one-third of the respondents did not think of their town as a place where they would like to settle down. We think this substantial

Conclusion

Research generally depicts place attachment in a positive light. The conventional understanding is that place attachment brings stability, creates assets and helps society to take on and complete long-term projects. We use evidence from case studies to question the appropriateness of this conventional wisdom and whether it should be applied blindly in the mining industry. We suggest that policy objectives that induce or sustain place attachment ought to be treated with caution and not adopted

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