The humanitarian class: transformation and tension in eastern Congo

Humanitarianism is imagined to be a short-term response to a temporary emergency. However, in reality, both crisis and aid often become protracted. This article examines a glaring consequence of protracted humanitarian presence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: the formation of a local humanitarian class, for whom the sector becomes a site of social mobility and identity construction. Incorporation into the humanitarian political economy, however, has been vastly unequal, exacerbating processes of social stratification. There has been a ground swell of public discontent with global humanitarianism. Framing these tensions as a story of local resistance versus international intervenors overlooks the fact that most employees working for global aid agencies in the Global South are locally hired. This article illustrates how protracted humanitarian action also generates localised tensions around access to resources and employment and questions of material inequality and class stratification produced by humanitarian permanence itself. This focus on local class transformation and stratification challenges neat assumptions about local empowerment in the global politics of humanitarianism. Instead, the humanitarian class are at the centre of contemporary debates about the future of international humanitarianism: a lightning rod for mounting public frustration at the paradoxical consequences of protracted emergency operations.