This article focuses on demobilised combatants who have experienced ‘downward social mobility’ in Côte d’Ivoire. It focuses on an association for demobilised individuals called ‘Cellule 39’ (Cell 39, C39), analysing the place occupied by this group and the strategy of a ‘purely administrative struggle’ that it has deployed within Ivorian society since 2012. The study shows that the collective identity that has been forged around a common past as rebels and as members of C39 has not proved capable of eradicating divisions within the group. The article illustrates the limits of this administrative struggle in a country where recourse to violence still appears to dictate political action and modes of governing people. On a more general level, it therefore considers the fragile nature of security transition in a ‘post-conflict’ Côte d’Ivoire that is still deeply marked by instability.