"I am an Intellectual". War, Youth and Higher Education in Goma (Eastern Congo)

The purpose of this paper is to explore, at an empirical level and with a processual view, the relationship between higher education, war, and youths’ aspirations in Eastern Congo. Students are a relevant social group and an adequate ethnographic lens to describe moments and processes of self-staging, identity formation and social positionality. Therefore, this article explores how students imagine their life chances and how they aspire to accomplish their yearnings in the future. I argue that university is a contested space that mirrors society. Thus, students’ experiences and social practices in relation to the educational realm offer important insights into the complex nature of patrimonial politics, shifting power balances, social belonging and intimacy, which are, as I argue, at the heart of the youthful imagination of a better future.