The humanitarian class: transformation and tension in eastern Congo

Myfanwy James

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: 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 groundswell 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. A focus on local class transformation and stratification challenges neat assumptions about local empowerment in the global politics of humanitarianism. Instead, the humanitarian class is 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.

Keywords: humanitarianism; conflict; DRC; class; identity; labour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2026-05-28
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Published in Review of International Studies, 28, May, 2026. ISSN: 0260-2105

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