Canadian Mining Investments in Argentina and the Construction of a Mining–Development Nexus

Abstract

This article explores the relations between Argentina and Canada through the mining sector during the political cycle of Kirchnerism (2003–2015). Mining has been a growing economic sector but also a source of social resistance capable of mobilizing a regulatory agenda that sets restrictions to this activity. State political agency has been central to managing these tensions. How has the state responded to the growth of the mining industry? What has been Canada's role in this process? The claim is that Kirchnerism's response to growing anti-mining resistance in a context of macroeconomic tensions has been to reframe transnational mining as consistent with a national development outlook. We explore this argument by looking at changes at the material, discursive, and institutional dimensions of the mining–development nexus.