The Persistent Involvement of Chinese Migrants in Small-Scale Mining in Rural Ghana: Role of the “Men” and the “Boys”
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the last two decades, rural Ghana has witnessed a substantial influx of Chinese migrants, who have predominantly engaged in (illegal) small-scale mining (locally known as galamsey) reserved by law for Ghanaian citizens. While the literature has focused on factors that motivate Chinese miners and the impacts of their involvement in Ghana’s SSM, there is relative dearth in examining the factors that sustain Chinese participation, and the responses of Ghanaian actors to Chinese miners’ involvement in the small-scale mining sector. This thesis explores the persistent issue of Chinese migrants’ involvement in Ghana's small-scale mining sector, investigating the collaborative efforts between local actors and Chinese miners. Drawing on Agency and Structure Theory and Political Ecology Theory, the study argues that economic motivations, regulatory gaps, socio-political networks, advanced technique and machinery sustain Chinese involvement in Ghana’s SSM. The patronage system involving “Boys” and “Men” shapes this dynamic, influencing access, protection, and policy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".