Social welfare and gold mining: A comparative pilot study in Suriname and French Guiana

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The question of how support from social welfare systems affects a household's economic reliance on natural resources is of interest in many social contexts. This pilot research by a cultural anthropologist will ask how forest peoples in Suriname and French Guiana participate in small-scale gold mining given access to national social welfare systems. Previous research suggests that gold mining in this area attracts large numbers of poor people, who have few subsistence alternatives, and a small number of relatively well off people, who can earn revenues by investing in mining equipment. The research predicts a U-shaped relation between access to social welfare and participation in gold mining, with poor people with the least access to welfare and rich people being the most likely to engage in mining. This hypothesis will be tested in two adjacent countries that are culturally and environmentally similar but differ in their systems of social welfare. The researchers will study three Maroon villages in Eastern Suriname and Western French Guiana, varying in their access to public services. Socioeconomic survey interviews will be carried out with fifty households in each village, ethnographic interviews and observations will be recorded at both sides of the border, and statistical information will be obtained from government offices and non-governmental organizations. Two U.S. graduate students will be trained in the fieldwork and will conduct their own research on comparative topics. Aside from contributing to the training of students in social science and advancing our understanding of the relation between access to welfare and work, the project will inform us about the relation between social welfare policy, socioeconomic development, and forest resource use and conservation.