Mining-induced displacements and the ontological (in)security of local communities: Experiences of the Chiadzwa people in Zimbabwe

• The article presents the threats to ontological security due to mining-induced displacements in Chiadzwa, Marange. • The article highlights the complex effects of mining-induced displacement of the Chiadzwa people. • The displacement of the Chiadzwa people led to both material and symbolic affective losses which created ontological insecurity. • The displaced Chiadzwa people’s lives became more precarious and vulnerable to shocks due to mining-induced displacement. • The neoliberal capitalist extractive economies show the complex entanglements between global circuits of extractivism and local community insecurities and anxieties. This article applies the concept of ontological (in)security to displacement studies to show how the process of being uprooted or displaced from familiar to unfamiliar spaces reconfigures the ontological security of the displaced Chiadzwa people in eastern Zimbabwe. I use ontological (in)security to unpack the everyday anxieties, uncertainties and precariousness of displaced people. Drawing from qualitative and ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with 30 displaced participants, this article shows how the establishment of large-scale neoliberal enclaves ruptures displaced people’s quotidian routines and socialities which unsettle their sense of being, belonging and placemaking. As such, displacement disrupts both the livelihoods and ‘lifeworlds’ of the displaced people, compelling them to rethink and renegotiate who they are, their imaginings of ‘home’ and what it means to exist and belong. I argue that displacement is not just a material process with which loss is experienced materially through land dispossession, loss of homes and other livelihood assets, but displacement is also a temporal dislocation marked by uncertainty on the present and the future as well as a loss of continuity with the past. Consequently, displacement becomes a complex configuration signified by profound existential rupture. I also argue that while displacement disrupts the material anchors of everyday life such as land, property, homes and livelihoods, it also ruptures the symbolic and affective existential foundations of being and identity.