Infrapolitics in Shinkolobwe: when local dynamics in the Democratic Republic of Congo raise questions about the hegemonic conception of ecological transition

As part of its ecological transition, Europe is now, more than ever, dependent on strategic mining resources, particularly from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Every month, protests erupt, denouncing unsustainable living conditions and serious environmental impacts. This socio-anthropological research focuses on these protests and other reactions involving various categories of local people. While the literature on mining in the DRC often views these reactions through an institutional and state-centred prism, opposing the state, its decentralised structures and mining companies to the local population, this study at Shinkolobwe reveals the importance of understanding them in terms of scale. It aims (i) to observe how the mining policies and contracts established at national level between the Congolese state and European companies lead to extractive activities that affect the living conditions of local populations; and (ii) to examine how these populations, which include different categories of actors, develop strategies and responses of various kinds, often in opposition to decisions taken at national level, in reaction to the allocation of their territory for mining in order to support the energy transition in Europe. This paper considers these ‘bottom-up’ responses of local populations to national mining policies and contracts as ‘infrapolitics’. The rereading of these responses ‘from below’, based on our redefinition of infrapolitics, reveals marginalised local positions in the face of hegemonic discourses ‘from above’ on the ecological transition in the mining sector. Furthermore, this article – based on interviews, observation and content analysis – contributes to debates on a more equitable and sustainable ecological transition.