Conclusion

In the Kivus, la debrouille may support the maintenance or reinforcement of the structures of violence. This is in accordance with Bourdieu's “law of conservation of violence” in which individuals “subject or sublimate themselves in order to adapt to their structures” (Bourdieu 2000, p.

Having lived most or all of their lives within the structures of violence prevents young people from imagining any other kind of situation. As explained by an adult participant in this research:

A child born into this has never known anything different, he cannot believe in another kind of reality. For those of us who are older, we knew something different. We have a feeling of nostalgia, we want to revolt. But for the youth, they know no other way. (interview, Bunyakiri, June 2010)

Young people in the Kivus today often express a definitive lack of hope about their future. This lack of hope is translated into the choices they make and the risks they take, both of which are based on present-oriented calculations. So occupied with surviving in the present, young people are not able to engage with the structures of violence in ways which would challenge or change them in the long term. My young research participants had no interest in mobilizing for political change, seeing that previous efforts had only resulted in repression and violence; having grown up fully embedded in the structures of violence, they could not even fathom what kind of change might be possible. Their capacity to effectively cope with the structures of violence today had thus become an essential component of the dynamic ensuring the conservation of violence in their future.