Extractive Economy and Mobilities. The Case of Large Copper Mining in the Antofagasta Region

In this article, we analyze the relationship between mobility and the extractive economy of large copper mining in the Antofagasta region, located in the north of Chile. We will argue that extractivism generates various types of mobilities, which result in unequal processes of incorporation into the city, produced by the intersection of class, the origin of migration (internal and international), gender, ethnicity and race. On the basis of previous and ongoing research, we examined three types of mobilities to illustrate these inequalities: (i) internal migration, which played a decisive role in the settlement of the city and the region: (ii) circular internal mobility, under the figure of commuters: professionals, technicians and operators, mainly men, with different working conditions; and (iii) international migration from Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and other countries, attracted by job opportunities in the formal and informal sector, with good, medium or bad conditions depending on the ethno-national, “racial”, class and gender “marks”.