Invisibility and the extractive-pandemic nexus

The Covid-19 pandemic is reshaping the world economy. Headline news stories depict mining companies as a stabilising force: supporting the flow of resources to keep the economy moving, and contributing to local welfare initiatives for communities in crisis. We argue that this narrative masks important details about the local conditions where mining companies operate. The issues at the company-community interface are typically invisible to distant audiences. While travel restrictions are necessary to limit community-spread, these constraints push interfaces in mining communities further into the unknown. The effects of the global pandemic will be far reaching. Scholarship is needed to understand the dynamics of mining in the time of Covid-19 and to place present impacts, actions, and decisions in their proper historical context.