par Mesa, Héritier 
Président du jury Newell, Sasha
Promoteur Noret, Joël
Co-Promoteur Malukisa Nkuku, Albert
Publication Non publié, 2025-08-29
Président du jury Newell, Sasha
Promoteur Noret, Joël
Co-Promoteur Malukisa Nkuku, Albert
Publication Non publié, 2025-08-29
Thèse de doctorat
| Résumé : | This thesis examines the structural dynamics of Kinshasa’s urban economy through an ethnographic study of its Central Market – a historically significant and symbolically charged site. It seeks to understand how social inequalities are produced, reproduced, and contested within what is commonly referred to as the “informal” economy, and how these processes intersect with state practices, access to capital, moral economies, and aspirations for social mobility. Taking Kinshasa’s Central Market as an entry point, the analysis explores how broader processes of governance, accumulation, and domination unfold in urban Congo. By tracing successive state interventions – including the demolition of the market – it moves from situated observation to an examination of how state power is exercised, contested, and reconfigured over time.Central to this analysis is Bourdieu’s concept of social space, which enables a relational understanding of how social agents position themselves and others within a field structured by the unequal distribution of various forms of capital. The thesis explores how economic assets, social networks, educational credentials, and symbolic distinctions shape the trajectories and strategies of market actors. These include the diversification of income sources, the mobilisation of social capital to access trade opportunities, and strategic engagement with state actors to gain advantage in a context marked by institutional ambiguity. For foreign traders and Congolese actors who have crossed certain thresholds of economic capital, international mobility and access to transnational networks create further opportunities for accumulation. These resources may, in turn, be converted into political capital – often through informal practices such as corruption or patronage.By contrast, those with more limited access to capital tend to rely on localised circuits of accumulation and pursue supplementary income-generating activities as strategies for aspiring to social mobility. At the more precarious end of the spectrum, individuals often sell their labour to more established traders. Yet even in these constrained positions, actors are not entirely determined by their structural location. Many continue to engage in improvisation and negotiation, actively navigating exclusion and seeking to reconfigure their conditions in pursuit of a viable livelihood.Crucially, traders’ social positions are not only individually enacted but also reproduced across generations. Many invest in their children’s futures through strategies such as education, migration support, or assistance in launching small businesses – open-ended efforts through which they hope to secure upward mobility and durable social recognition for their descendants. |
