Matthieu Bolay
Biographic Data
| ID | 93767 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthieu Bolay |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthieu |
| FAMILY NAME | Bolay |
| SIGNATURE | BOLAY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0005-1302 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 133 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Investor-state dispute settlement in the extractives: The contentious politics of exit over redistribution, anti-racism, and climate policy
Investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) has become a key site where extractive capitalism collides with sovereignty claims by eroding democratic decision making, draining public budgets, and constraining climate policies. Yet, despite mounting calls for reform or abolition, withdrawals from the investment treaty regime remain rare. This article investigates the promises and processes of exit through three case studies where governments faced dis…
Du droit d’usage au droit au profit ? La cohabitation minière à l’épreuve de l’arbitrage d’investissement en Tanzanie
Cet article explore comment le droit international de l’investissement et l’arbitrage des différends entre investisseurs et Etats reconfigurent la gouvernance minière en Tanzanie, notamment dans les relations entre compagnies minières et acteurs de l’extraction artisanale et à petite échelle (EMAPE). L’analyse inscrit d’abord ces dynamiques dans un contexte global de litiges croissants sur les investissements extractifs pour lesquels les investis…
Les conditions disputées d'un approvisionnement « responsable » en or: Vigilance, traçabilité et transparence dans le secteur suisse de l’affinage
Cet article analyse les conditions de responsabilité de la chaîne d'approvisionnement de l'or importé et affiné en Suisse. Partant du paradoxe que constitue le rôle de garant joué par un secteur qui procède dans le même temps à effacer les traces du passé potentiellement litigieux de l'or, il examine les luttes et les enjeux juridiques au travers desquels les revendications d'approvisionnement responsable sont établies. Il détaille les modalités …
Des réseaux aux chaînes d'approvisionnement. Économies morales et performances de moralisation dans le commerce de l'or au Mali post 2012
Cet article interroge les recompositions récentes du champ du commerce de l'or au Mali (à Bamako) à la lumière de la compétition à laquelle se livrent des comptoirs d'exportation et des raffineries pour l'acquisition et la commercialisation d'or issu des mines artisanales dans un contexte de crise politique. Les stratégies contrastées des comptoirs, soit celles s'appuyant sur de complexes réseaux de supports et de dépendances, et des affineurs, s…
Labour, Incorporated: Dependent Contracting and Wageless Work in Africa's "Responsible" Mines
This article examines the growing corporate reliance on artisanal labour in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This shift from autonomous miners to corporate contractors, we suggest, holds historical significance and augurs a radical break with contemporary modes of extractive production. Under the banner of "responsible mining," this form of dependent contracting fosters wageless relations in exchange for legal access to minin…
Miners on the move: Expellable labor, flexible intimacies, and institutional recast in West African artisanal gold mines
The expansion of gold mining in West Africa transforms miners' relations to space and time as they move frequently from one mining site to the next. Whereas labor, reproduction, and social integration are expected to be durably organized through the social institutions of marriage, mentorship, and friendship, itinerant miners recast these institutions in a compressed and nonbinding form. As evictions from illegal mines multiply, miners create a l…
Dis/connection Matters: Natural, Synthetic, and Digital
The world is experiencing new relations and transformations between natural, synthetic, and digital substances. Rather than considering these as materially distinct or ontologically separate, this Special Issue of TSANTSA interrogates how they are interlocked in socio-material processes of mediation, transmutation, and valuation. By conceptualizing the specificity of their separateness, the special issue makes possible the comparison and commensu…
Fabricating the Integrity of Gold in Refineries: Digital Visibility and Divisibility
Gold refineries are under pressure to revise their understanding of “integrity” beyond the physical cohesion of gold products, in order to integrate supply chain due diligence on human rights, labour conditions, and conflict financing as part of what can be coined the ethical integrity of gold. This article interrogates how processes of erasure, through material purification in the refining process, and disclosure, through certification against “…
Cobalt mining and the corporate outsourcing of responsibility in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The consumption of cobalt has tripled globally over the last decade, largely driven by rising demand for electronics and electric-battery vehicles. This fast-growing market has pressured multinational mining companies operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world's largest supplier of cobalt, to formalize artisanal mining under the banner of responsible sourcing. Based on field research in the cobalt-rich Province of Lualaba, survey da…
Disentangling Mining and Migratory Routes in West Africa: Decisions to Move in Migranticised Settings
This article scrutinizes the trajectories of African men whose cross-border movements intersect two types of mobility routes: mining and migration routes. Drawing on field research in Mali and Guinea, as well as phone interviews with male miners/migrants in North Africa and Europe, this article provides a case to empirically question some of the premises in the approach to migration decision-making by giving a voice to African men moving across b…
Corporate gift or political sacrifice? State-sponsored CSR and electricity provision in Guinean extractive enclaves
Going beyond a static conceptualization of the mining enclave, recent research increasingly scrutinizes the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes as a means of territorial entanglement. Several authors refer to the notion of the “corporate gift” to describe these control and coping strategies as well as the resulting power relations between companies and the population around the production facilities. In this article, we focus on…
The conceptual limits of the 'migration journey'. De-exceptionalising mobility in the context of West African trajectories
n Contains fulltext :\n 221965pub.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Cosmopolitan enclaves: An introduction
Cosmopolitan enclaves emerge at the intersection of global dynamics and local contexts as spaces where the cultivation of a cosmopolitan ethos encounters processes of socio-spatial boundary work and segregation. In the introduction to this special issue, we discuss under which circumstances the intention to cultivate open-mindedness goes hand in hand with keeping the local environment at bay. We argue that ethnographic attention to cosmopolitan e…
Frontiers of cosmopolitanism: Educational enclaves and the extractive roots of international schools
This article situates international expatriate schools in their cultural and political economy by drawing attention to the tensions between a cosmopolitan educational ethos and processes of social, economic and legal enclavement. Based on extensive multi-sited ethnographic research in the international school sector, we show how cosmopolitan claims of openness mirror a relative closure and 'offshore-like' enclavement. To do so, we build upon the …
Precarious privilege: Personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers
Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in the field of international schools, and a concurrent rise in the number of young Anglo-Saxon teachers overseas. Such mobile teaching careers have largely been presented in terms of emphasising exploration, travel and lifestyle-related migration. While acknowledging such factors, we also draw attention to financial constraints, and in particular, to the challenge of personal debts, which weighs hea…
Voir dans la pierre: Réfractions visuelles et apprentissage du métier d’évaluateur dans l’industrie globalisée du diamant
Sur la base d'une étude ethnographique de l'apprentissage de l'évaluation des diamants taillés dans des laboratoires de gemmologie en Belgique et en Inde ainsi que d'entretiens avec des évaluateurs novices et chevronnés (Belgique, États-Unis, Inde, Royaume-Uni, Suisse), cet article propose la notion de réfraction visuelle pour analyser la construction subjective et technique du certificat dans le commerce global du diamant. En analysant l'apprent…
Seeing inside the stone: Visual refractions and the apprenticeship of evaluation in the global diamond industry
This article puts forth the notion of visual refraction to analyze the subjective and technical construction of grading certificates in the global diamond trade. Research was based on an ethnographic study of rough diamond grading and evaluation courses in gemological laboratories in Belgium and India, as well as interviews with novice and experienced evaluators (Belgium, United States, India, United Kingdom, and Switzerland). By 'seeing in the s…
Fostering the Next Generation of "Responsible World Leaders": The Learning of Corporate Social Responsibility in Swiss International Schools
Les temporalités de l'éducation internationale: Pratiques et technologies de l'accélération sociale
L'école est un lieu où sont mis en acte quotidiennement des temporalités spécifiques dans les pratiques éducatives des enseignantes et enseignants, tant au sein des classes que dans les autres espaces des établissements. Cet article, basé sur une recherche ethnographique dans plus de 15 écoles en Suisse, s'intéresse à la temporalité accélérée qui prédomine dans les écoles dites « internationales », dont l'expansion est massive depuis les années 2…
The conceptual limits of the 'migration journey'. De-exceptionalising mobility in the context of West African trajectories
n Contains fulltext :\n 221965pub.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Cobalt mining and the corporate outsourcing of responsibility in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The consumption of cobalt has tripled globally over the last decade, largely driven by rising demand for electronics and electric-battery vehicles. This fast-growing market has pressured multinational mining companies operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world's largest supplier of cobalt, to formalize artisanal mining under the banner of responsible sourcing. Based on field research in the cobalt-rich Province of Lualaba, survey da…
Precarious privilege: Personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers
Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in the field of international schools, and a concurrent rise in the number of young Anglo-Saxon teachers overseas. Such mobile teaching careers have largely been presented in terms of emphasising exploration, travel and lifestyle-related migration. While acknowledging such factors, we also draw attention to financial constraints, and in particular, to the challenge of personal debts, which weighs hea…
Frontiers of cosmopolitanism: Educational enclaves and the extractive roots of international schools
This article situates international expatriate schools in their cultural and political economy by drawing attention to the tensions between a cosmopolitan educational ethos and processes of social, economic and legal enclavement. Based on extensive multi-sited ethnographic research in the international school sector, we show how cosmopolitan claims of openness mirror a relative closure and 'offshore-like' enclavement. To do so, we build upon the …
Cosmopolitan enclaves: An introduction
Cosmopolitan enclaves emerge at the intersection of global dynamics and local contexts as spaces where the cultivation of a cosmopolitan ethos encounters processes of socio-spatial boundary work and segregation. In the introduction to this special issue, we discuss under which circumstances the intention to cultivate open-mindedness goes hand in hand with keeping the local environment at bay. We argue that ethnographic attention to cosmopolitan e…
Les conditions disputées d'un approvisionnement « responsable » en or: Vigilance, traçabilité et transparence dans le secteur suisse de l’affinage
Cet article analyse les conditions de responsabilité de la chaîne d'approvisionnement de l'or importé et affiné en Suisse. Partant du paradoxe que constitue le rôle de garant joué par un secteur qui procède dans le même temps à effacer les traces du passé potentiellement litigieux de l'or, il examine les luttes et les enjeux juridiques au travers desquels les revendications d'approvisionnement responsable sont établies. Il détaille les modalités …
Miners on the move: Expellable labor, flexible intimacies, and institutional recast in West African artisanal gold mines
The expansion of gold mining in West Africa transforms miners' relations to space and time as they move frequently from one mining site to the next. Whereas labor, reproduction, and social integration are expected to be durably organized through the social institutions of marriage, mentorship, and friendship, itinerant miners recast these institutions in a compressed and nonbinding form. As evictions from illegal mines multiply, miners create a l…
Corporate gift or political sacrifice? State-sponsored CSR and electricity provision in Guinean extractive enclaves
Going beyond a static conceptualization of the mining enclave, recent research increasingly scrutinizes the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes as a means of territorial entanglement. Several authors refer to the notion of the “corporate gift” to describe these control and coping strategies as well as the resulting power relations between companies and the population around the production facilities. In this article, we focus on…
Labour, Incorporated: Dependent Contracting and Wageless Work in Africa's "Responsible" Mines
This article examines the growing corporate reliance on artisanal labour in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This shift from autonomous miners to corporate contractors, we suggest, holds historical significance and augurs a radical break with contemporary modes of extractive production. Under the banner of "responsible mining," this form of dependent contracting fosters wageless relations in exchange for legal access to minin…
Des réseaux aux chaînes d'approvisionnement. Économies morales et performances de moralisation dans le commerce de l'or au Mali post 2012
Cet article interroge les recompositions récentes du champ du commerce de l'or au Mali (à Bamako) à la lumière de la compétition à laquelle se livrent des comptoirs d'exportation et des raffineries pour l'acquisition et la commercialisation d'or issu des mines artisanales dans un contexte de crise politique. Les stratégies contrastées des comptoirs, soit celles s'appuyant sur de complexes réseaux de supports et de dépendances, et des affineurs, s…
Disentangling Mining and Migratory Routes in West Africa: Decisions to Move in Migranticised Settings
This article scrutinizes the trajectories of African men whose cross-border movements intersect two types of mobility routes: mining and migration routes. Drawing on field research in Mali and Guinea, as well as phone interviews with male miners/migrants in North Africa and Europe, this article provides a case to empirically question some of the premises in the approach to migration decision-making by giving a voice to African men moving across b…
Les temporalités de l'éducation internationale: Pratiques et technologies de l'accélération sociale
L'école est un lieu où sont mis en acte quotidiennement des temporalités spécifiques dans les pratiques éducatives des enseignantes et enseignants, tant au sein des classes que dans les autres espaces des établissements. Cet article, basé sur une recherche ethnographique dans plus de 15 écoles en Suisse, s'intéresse à la temporalité accélérée qui prédomine dans les écoles dites « internationales », dont l'expansion est massive depuis les années 2…
Les temporalités de l'éducation internationale: Pratiques et technologies de l'accélération sociale
L'école est un lieu où sont mis en acte quotidiennement des temporalités spécifiques dans les pratiques éducatives des enseignantes et enseignants, tant au sein des classes que dans les autres espaces des établissements. Cet article, basé sur une recherche ethnographique dans plus de 15 écoles en Suisse, s'intéresse à la temporalité accélérée qui prédomine dans les écoles dites « internationales », dont l'expansion est massive depuis les années 2…
Fostering the Next Generation of "Responsible World Leaders": The Learning of Corporate Social Responsibility in Swiss International Schools
Precarious privilege: Personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers
Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in the field of international schools, and a concurrent rise in the number of young Anglo-Saxon teachers overseas. Such mobile teaching careers have largely been presented in terms of emphasising exploration, travel and lifestyle-related migration. While acknowledging such factors, we also draw attention to financial constraints, and in particular, to the challenge of personal debts, which weighs hea…
Voir dans la pierre: Réfractions visuelles et apprentissage du métier d’évaluateur dans l’industrie globalisée du diamant
Sur la base d'une étude ethnographique de l'apprentissage de l'évaluation des diamants taillés dans des laboratoires de gemmologie en Belgique et en Inde ainsi que d'entretiens avec des évaluateurs novices et chevronnés (Belgique, États-Unis, Inde, Royaume-Uni, Suisse), cet article propose la notion de réfraction visuelle pour analyser la construction subjective et technique du certificat dans le commerce global du diamant. En analysant l'apprent…
Seeing inside the stone: Visual refractions and the apprenticeship of evaluation in the global diamond industry
This article puts forth the notion of visual refraction to analyze the subjective and technical construction of grading certificates in the global diamond trade. Research was based on an ethnographic study of rough diamond grading and evaluation courses in gemological laboratories in Belgium and India, as well as interviews with novice and experienced evaluators (Belgium, United States, India, United Kingdom, and Switzerland). By 'seeing in the s…
Dis/connection Matters: Natural, Synthetic, and Digital
The world is experiencing new relations and transformations between natural, synthetic, and digital substances. Rather than considering these as materially distinct or ontologically separate, this Special Issue of TSANTSA interrogates how they are interlocked in socio-material processes of mediation, transmutation, and valuation. By conceptualizing the specificity of their separateness, the special issue makes possible the comparison and commensu…
Fabricating the Integrity of Gold in Refineries: Digital Visibility and Divisibility
Gold refineries are under pressure to revise their understanding of “integrity” beyond the physical cohesion of gold products, in order to integrate supply chain due diligence on human rights, labour conditions, and conflict financing as part of what can be coined the ethical integrity of gold. This article interrogates how processes of erasure, through material purification in the refining process, and disclosure, through certification against “…
Cobalt mining and the corporate outsourcing of responsibility in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The consumption of cobalt has tripled globally over the last decade, largely driven by rising demand for electronics and electric-battery vehicles. This fast-growing market has pressured multinational mining companies operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world's largest supplier of cobalt, to formalize artisanal mining under the banner of responsible sourcing. Based on field research in the cobalt-rich Province of Lualaba, survey da…
Disentangling Mining and Migratory Routes in West Africa: Decisions to Move in Migranticised Settings
This article scrutinizes the trajectories of African men whose cross-border movements intersect two types of mobility routes: mining and migration routes. Drawing on field research in Mali and Guinea, as well as phone interviews with male miners/migrants in North Africa and Europe, this article provides a case to empirically question some of the premises in the approach to migration decision-making by giving a voice to African men moving across b…
Corporate gift or political sacrifice? State-sponsored CSR and electricity provision in Guinean extractive enclaves
Going beyond a static conceptualization of the mining enclave, recent research increasingly scrutinizes the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes as a means of territorial entanglement. Several authors refer to the notion of the “corporate gift” to describe these control and coping strategies as well as the resulting power relations between companies and the population around the production facilities. In this article, we focus on…
The conceptual limits of the 'migration journey'. De-exceptionalising mobility in the context of West African trajectories
n Contains fulltext :\n 221965pub.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Cosmopolitan enclaves: An introduction
Cosmopolitan enclaves emerge at the intersection of global dynamics and local contexts as spaces where the cultivation of a cosmopolitan ethos encounters processes of socio-spatial boundary work and segregation. In the introduction to this special issue, we discuss under which circumstances the intention to cultivate open-mindedness goes hand in hand with keeping the local environment at bay. We argue that ethnographic attention to cosmopolitan e…
Frontiers of cosmopolitanism: Educational enclaves and the extractive roots of international schools
This article situates international expatriate schools in their cultural and political economy by drawing attention to the tensions between a cosmopolitan educational ethos and processes of social, economic and legal enclavement. Based on extensive multi-sited ethnographic research in the international school sector, we show how cosmopolitan claims of openness mirror a relative closure and 'offshore-like' enclavement. To do so, we build upon the …
Les conditions disputées d'un approvisionnement « responsable » en or: Vigilance, traçabilité et transparence dans le secteur suisse de l’affinage
Cet article analyse les conditions de responsabilité de la chaîne d'approvisionnement de l'or importé et affiné en Suisse. Partant du paradoxe que constitue le rôle de garant joué par un secteur qui procède dans le même temps à effacer les traces du passé potentiellement litigieux de l'or, il examine les luttes et les enjeux juridiques au travers desquels les revendications d'approvisionnement responsable sont établies. Il détaille les modalités …
Des réseaux aux chaînes d'approvisionnement. Économies morales et performances de moralisation dans le commerce de l'or au Mali post 2012
Cet article interroge les recompositions récentes du champ du commerce de l'or au Mali (à Bamako) à la lumière de la compétition à laquelle se livrent des comptoirs d'exportation et des raffineries pour l'acquisition et la commercialisation d'or issu des mines artisanales dans un contexte de crise politique. Les stratégies contrastées des comptoirs, soit celles s'appuyant sur de complexes réseaux de supports et de dépendances, et des affineurs, s…
Labour, Incorporated: Dependent Contracting and Wageless Work in Africa's "Responsible" Mines
This article examines the growing corporate reliance on artisanal labour in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This shift from autonomous miners to corporate contractors, we suggest, holds historical significance and augurs a radical break with contemporary modes of extractive production. Under the banner of "responsible mining," this form of dependent contracting fosters wageless relations in exchange for legal access to minin…
Miners on the move: Expellable labor, flexible intimacies, and institutional recast in West African artisanal gold mines
The expansion of gold mining in West Africa transforms miners' relations to space and time as they move frequently from one mining site to the next. Whereas labor, reproduction, and social integration are expected to be durably organized through the social institutions of marriage, mentorship, and friendship, itinerant miners recast these institutions in a compressed and nonbinding form. As evictions from illegal mines multiply, miners create a l…
Du droit d’usage au droit au profit ? La cohabitation minière à l’épreuve de l’arbitrage d’investissement en Tanzanie
Cet article explore comment le droit international de l’investissement et l’arbitrage des différends entre investisseurs et Etats reconfigurent la gouvernance minière en Tanzanie, notamment dans les relations entre compagnies minières et acteurs de l’extraction artisanale et à petite échelle (EMAPE). L’analyse inscrit d’abord ces dynamiques dans un contexte global de litiges croissants sur les investissements extractifs pour lesquels les investis…
Investor-state dispute settlement in the extractives: The contentious politics of exit over redistribution, anti-racism, and climate policy
Investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) has become a key site where extractive capitalism collides with sovereignty claims by eroding democratic decision making, draining public budgets, and constraining climate policies. Yet, despite mounting calls for reform or abolition, withdrawals from the investment treaty regime remain rare. This article investigates the promises and processes of exit through three case studies where governments faced dis…
Political science (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Mining and Resource Management (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Humanities (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Art (4 works)