What People in Eastern Congo Do for Money

In his work at the Department of Geography, political geographer Stephan Hochleithner studies the living conditions of internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the east of this central African country where war has raged for the last twenty years, there are currently around a million IDPs (internally displaced persons) fleeing for safety. Some are taken in by host families and, in keeping with the traditional “muhako” system, can resume farming and thus carry on with their lives. But because many such persons are repeatedly forced to move on, fewer and fewer hosts are willing to take them in for free. As a result, the IDPs are becoming a “conflict proletariat” and are forced to accept any kind of work – often under near-slavery conditions – for money. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork, Stephen Hochleithner demonstrates how the muhako system is giving way to a capitalist mode of production. This new mode is now determining material and social (re-)production, thus altering the structures of the society as a whole.

Artistic realization: Michela Flück