Filling or widening ‘circular’ voids? On institutional imaginaries and barriers to circular economy transitions in artisanal and small-scale mining

In this paper, we employed a qualitative approach to investigate the barriers that impede circular economy (CE) transitions in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) enclaves in Ghana. Drawing on institutional voids and imaginary thinking, we identified five interrelated barriers to CE transitions in ASM: (i) limited to no regulation for tailings governance, (ii) competing imaginaries fragmenting collective action, (iii) exploitative and restrictive market-making dynamics, (iv) technological barriers, and (v) partial social acceptance. Collectively, these barriers exist in mutually reinforcing relationships, where voids and imaginaries operate as co-constitutive forces that shape tailings circularity across communities. Our analysis also discusses how institutional voids and related barriers to tailings circularity act as socio-politically constructed configurations shaped by asymmetric practices and governance arrangements, with uneven outcomes between formal and informal actors. Based on our findings, we demonstrate how circular voids – spatial and institutional traps where exclusion perpetuates itself – fundamentally reshape value chains and the lived and material geographies of tailings operations. We conclude that effective governance interventions must rethink conventional formalisation frameworks to embed collaborative and hybridised governance structures that centre informal actors’ imaginaries, networks and lived geographies in designing equitable pathways for sustainable tailings management.