Guillaume Vadot was a postdoctoral fellow at Norbert Elias Centre (EHESS, France). He holds a PhD in political sociology from Paris 1 Sorbonne University. Part of MinErAl knowledge network, his investigations dealt with the life trajectories and relationship to employment of Kanak wage earners working in the nickel industry in New Caledonia, especially women and youth. His previous researches were dedicated to large-scale plantations. His doctoral thesis draws on a vast quantitative and ethnographic survey conducted in three agro-industrial complexes in Cameroon. It shows wage labour is inscribed in wider worlds of meanings, constraints and expectations for the (mostly migrant) workers, and how this experience contributes to the spatialization of plantation enterprises, to the production of political territory and to state formation. This questioning about subaltern wage employment, its grassroots significations and its participation to the making of the political field is key to Guillaume’s future researches.