Home>Research & Environment: Postdoc Pia Bailleul Works on Mining in Greenland
25.10.2023
Research & Environment: Postdoc Pia Bailleul Works on Mining in Greenland
On 1 September 2023, Sciences Po's Center for International Studies (CERI) welcomed Pia Bailleul , who joined us for three years as part of a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Bruno Latour Fund. The aim of this programme, initiated by Bruno Latour, is to bring to Sciences Po a group of ten or so young scientists who are at the cutting edge of the most fundamental aspects of political ecology research, from a variety of humanities and social sciences disciplines, to reflect on the consequences of ecological change. The Fund is part of Sciences Po's Institute for Environmental Transformations, which aims to ensure the coherence and visibility of research and teaching activities on these themes. Pia Bailleul answers many questions in this interview that was initially published by Miriam Périer on the CERI's website.
could you tell us a bit about your research background and your doctoral thesis?
I am an anthropologist working on the political and social issues relating to mining resources and activities in Greenland. This interest arose while I was completing my doctoral thesis in French, entitled “National deposits and common lands : study of the legal, geological and political reconfigurations of the treatment of Greenlandic soils and subsoils from the ethnography of the Kuannersuit mining project” (Gisements nationaux et terres communes : étude des reconfigurations juridiques, géologiques et politiques des traitements des sols et des sous-sols groenlandais à partir de l'ethnographie du projet minier de Kuannersuit) conducted from 2017 to 2022 at Nanterre University.
Based on a year-long ethnography in Greenland and a text analysis (legal, political, geological, and related to the mining sector), I studied the impacts of mining industrialisation on the restriction of collective land rights and the construction of state power. Last year, I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship as part of the French national research agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) Ruling on Nature research programme led by the anthropologist Daniela Berti, during which I focused on rare earth projects and the social and political implications of developing this new resource.
You are currently working on mining projects in Greenland and their consequences for the territorialisation of the state and Greenland's relationship with Denmark. Could you explain what you mean by the “frontier zone” and its implications for your research?
I approach the “frontier zone” as a phenomenon of spatial organisation driven by the will to exploit resources. Whereas in many contexts the frontier zone is described in this way by external stakeholders who exploit resources to the point of exhaustion, with no interest in the local population or the environment, in Greenland it is a matter of a national orientation with a view to independence (through mining rents). In Greenland, the frontier zone is the result of negotiations between the mining companies that explore the subsoil and successive governments that use it for political purposes.
The challenge for me is, on the one hand, to grasp the space that this situation creates and the specific social and political implications that it poses for extractivism in the Arctic. On the other hand, it is a means for broader comparison, through the study of a case that presents the establishment of the frontier zone, rather than its stage of exhaustion, as is often the case. The Greenland frontier zone is still in the early stages of actual exploitation, and studying it will help us understand how a mineral becomes a resource (stakeholders, links between the geological, legal, and political orders of a given material), and therefore to follow the phenomenon of spatial composition as it develops.
How do you intend to use your postdoctoral stay at Sciences Po to further your research?
During my three years as a postdoc at the CERI and as part of the Bruno Latour Fund, I intend to develop the geopolitical dimension of my work. I am looking at the development of critical metals projects in Greenland with a view to understanding the impact of the European Green Deal, and more specifically the “resilient” resource supply strategy, on extraction in the Arctic and the way it is represented.
How is the so-called European green resilience being exploited in one of the territories most affected by global warming, and what are its social, environmental, and local political effects? How is collaboration between Greenland and Europe on critical metals changing pan-Arctic political relations? As part of our scientific activities (such as the Interdisciplinary Environmental Research Workshop - AIRE), we will be looking more broadly at what this “green and polar frontier” can teach us about Europe’s energy “resilience”.
