Mining and Competing Sovereignties in New Caledonia

Mining, especially nickel mining, has a long history in New Caledonia and cannot be separated from the trajectory of this territory as a settler colony. However, the construction of mining as a political stake and resource in the New Caledonian public arenas has come surprisingly late, only emerging explicitly in the 1990s as pro-independence parties pushed the issue to the fore in their negotiations with the French state and anti-independence parties. Nickel mining and processing became part of the claim for sovereignty in the form of a 'resource nationalism' discourse. This paper discusses the multi-layered nature of sovereignty through the theoretical propositions of Richard Joyce on 'competing sovereignties' (2013) to illustrate both the complexities of a decolonization situation that has lasted for 20 years and the challenges posed to sovereignty by mining.