The union has reoriented towards entrepreneurship: neoliberal solidarities on Zambia’s Copperbelt

Extensive labour subcontracting has decimated workers’ incomes and unions’ power on Zambia’s Copperbelt. In response, miners workers with permanent contracts provide each other daily material support, unions sell credit-based services to members, enabling their lives subsidising subcontractors’ unionisation. These interactions make low-wage resource extraction viable. They can therefore be understood as ‘neoliberal solidarities’: struggles refashion social relations in a more equitable way, which structurally support neoliberal political economies projects of self-making. solidarities entrench union–company interdependence, empowering radical demands, yet making the realisation these demands difficult imagine.