In 1926, the Union minière du Haut-Katanga laid the foundations of the paternalistic policies that would affect the daily lives of its workers for more than half a century. In 2003, after a decade of uncertainty, 10,000 workers were dismissed by the firm as part of a World Bank-designed effort to liberalize the mining sector. How did these workers react to their ‘abandonment' by the company? How did they come to grips with their newfound independence? What effects did the decline in their living conditions, then their dismissal, have on their relations with their spouses, children, and close circles? Based on ethnographic research in a worker's camp in Likasi (Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo), this book attempts to answer these questions using a Foucault-inspired analysis framework, an approach that allows it to develop a broader consideration of an actual paternalistic experience in the new economic order that the World Bank seeks to impose on this part of Africa.

Benjamin Rubbers holds a PhD in anthropology from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales. He teaches at the Université de Liège and is a lecturer at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Rubbers has been studying economic and political changes in the Katanga mining basin (DR Congo) since 1999. His last book, Faire fortune en Afrique. Anthropologie des derniers colons du Katanga, was published by Karthala in 2009 as part of the 'Les Afriques' series.