Beyond Iraq

• Author: Adam White
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X17711898
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Beyond Iraq:

The Socioeconomic

Trajectories of Private

Military Veterans

Adam White

1

Abstract

Through the lens of veterans studies, we know a great deal about the fate of those

soldiers who have recently returned home following a period of deployment in Iraq

and Afghanistan,yet counterintuitivelywe know nothing about theplight of the private

military contractors who worked alongside them. Addressing this blind spot, the

article explores the socioeconomic trajectories of “private military veterans” from a

life-course perspective. Specifically, it addresses threequestions regarding their status

in the civilian labor market. What occupations do they work in? To what extent do

they work in similar occupations to public military veterans? To what extent do they

work in similar occupations to the general population? Focusing on the U.K. case, it

reveals that private military veterans are significantly overrepresented in the

“protective service occupations,” where they primarily work in the private security

industry, and offers a multilayered explanation for this distinctive clustering effect.

Keywords

private military, private security, veterans, labor markets, employment and occupa-

tions, life-course perspective, LinkedIn

1

Centre for Criminological Research, School of Law, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K.

Corresponding Author:

Adam White, Centre for Criminological Research, School of Law, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S3

7ND, U.K.

Email: adam.white@sheffield.ac.uk

Armed Forces & Society

2018, Vol. 44(3) 387-407

ªThe Author(s) 2017

Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17711898

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Introduction

The field of veteransstudies rests on the propositionthat for most soldiers the war does

not end the moment theyleave the battlefield, but continues to impact upon theirlife-

coursesin positive and negativeways for decades to come.Through this lens, we knowa

great dealabout the fate of those soldierswho have recently returnedhome following a

period of deployment in the Middle East (Hicks, Weiss, & Coll, 2016). Counterintui-

tively, though, w e know nothing about the p light of their private sec tor counterparts.

While there were an estimated 54,000 armed private military contractors working in

Iraq and Afghanistan at the height of the War on Terror (Krahmann, 2012, p. 344),

employment opportunities in the region have long since beenin decline following the

drawdown of Coalition operations, forcing many contractors to move on and assume

new identitiesas “private military veterans.” Yetwe have no idea where these individ-

uals are, what theyare doing, what condition they are in,how they are being treated, or

what impact they are havingupon their families, communities, and societies. Are they

followingsimilar patterns to publicmilitary veterans or are they establishingnew ones?

The purposeof the article is to advance a first-cutanswer to this question.It does so

by drawing upon the “life-course” perspective, which provides an analytical frame-

work for interroga ting how directional chang es in the lives of individuals and c om-

munities areshaped by the different contextsin which they find themselves embedded

over time (Mayer, 2009). At the center of this framework are three interrelated con-

cepts: “trajectories,” “transitions,” and “turning points.” Trajectories are the most

common developmental pathways in any given life course, such as socioeconomic

status, family relations, or physical and mental health.

1

Transitions refer to contextual

shifts within these trajectories, such as starting a new job, having children, or being

diagnosedwith chronic illness. Turning pointsdenote those transitions which interrupt

established trajectories, rerouting them in new directions. The relationship between

these conceptsis not fixed but open-ended, as Clausen (1998,p. 203, emphasis added)

puts it, “every major role transition can quite reasonably be considered as potentially

constituting a turning point.” Over the past few decades, military scholars have found

great value inapplying these concepts to different cohorts of publicmilitary veteran to

assess the extent to which their military careers represented notable turning points in

their life-course trajectories (Elder, 1986; Elder, Gimbel, & Ivie, 1991; Maclean &

Elder, 2007).Following in this tradition, thearticle focuses on three specificquestions

relating to the socioeconomic trajectories of private military veterans in the civilian

labor market. What occupations do they work in? To what extent do they work in

similar occupations to public militaryveterans? To what extent do theywork in similar

occupations to the general population?

It answers these questions through an inductive line of en quiry. It begins by

defining what a “private military veteran” actually is, for it is an entirely new

concept. It then profiles the employment patterns of 381 private military contractors

at two points in space and time. The first point locates each of these contractors in

Project Matrix, a high-profile Iraq-based outsourcing arrangement between the U.S.

388 Armed Forces & Society 44(3)