Research Group Saxinger

Resource extraction, community–industry relations, human–environment relations, Indigenous studies, solidarity, intersectionality, subsistence, multi-locality, remoteness, mobility, human security, decolonial research methodology and co-creation of knowledge

The overall interest of this research group is socio-economic wellbeing and multi-perspective approaches to resource extraction in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. Therefore, the relation of people to their environment (practices, symbolism, ideas) and the past and contemporary interaction between local and Indigenous communities and the extractive industries are in the focus. One key area is long-distance commuting (LDC) or so called fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) work, which is today the prime form of labour organisation in remote mining regions of the world. Other important research fields are regional development of remote places and mono-industrial towns as well as human security in the Arctic.

Indigenous cultural revitalisation, ‘competing’ histories in settler and mining colonial contexts and related perspectives of Indigenous youth in northern Canada as well as entanglements of large-scale oil extraction in Siberia with changing mobility practices for subsistence hunting are the main areas of the PhD students Susanna Gartler and Gertraud Illmeier respectively. Gerti Saxinger’s new focus is on solidarity and social justice discourses around increased mineral extraction in times of the ‘green transition’.

Current and past members of this APRI working group are social anthropologists, political scientists and geographers.