Enacting the coal enclave: corporate sovereignty in central Mozambique
Researcher
The research project studies how transnational mining corporations acquire and maintain a position of sovereign power through infrastructural projects surrounding a coal mine in Tete, Mozambique. The research explores dynamics of violence and securitization as well as social and economic development in relation to mining-induced resettlements, railways, and enclave-like infrastructures of the coal mines. Thereby the research aims to uncover how transnational companies become dominant political, even sovereign actors in marginal, resource-rich areas in the global south. The project is funded by the NWO Veni scheme.
In addition, Nikkie’s research focuses on dynamics of conflict and armed actors in relation to extractive projects and beyond. She has conducted extensive fieldwork with former combatants in Mozambique and is interested in the political and social trajectories of war veterans and how these shape and are shaped by larger power structures.
Key publications
Wiegink, Nikkie. 2018. Imagining booms and busts: Conflicting temporalities and the extraction-"development" nexus in Mozambique. The Extractive Industries and Society, 5 (2), (pp. 245-252).
Wiegink, Nikkie. 2015. “It will be our time to eat”: Former Renamo combatants and big man dynamics in central Mozambique. Journal of Southern African Studies41(4): 869-885.
Wiegink, Nikkie. 2015. Former military networks, a threat to peace? The Demobilisation and remobilisation of Renamo in ventral Mozambique. Stability: Journal of Security and Development 4(1): 1-16.
Wiegink, Nikkie. 2013. Why did the soldiers not go home? Demobilized combatants, family life, and witchcraft in postwar Mozambique. Anthropological Quarterly 86(1): 107-113.