Over the last few decades, the academic and public gaze has increasingly focused on military veterans. The extant literature has documented a wealth of problems that emerge once a service leaver enters civilian life, including homelessness, mental health issues, criminality, and substance misuse. Accordingly, the intention to improve the wellbeing of veterans in the UK has certainly been evident within various government-initiated strategies.
However, most scholarly attention has concentrated on the few veterans who encounter these extreme transitions. This book sheds light on the vast majority who are deemed to have an ‘unproblematic’ transition on account of their employment status and lack of serious social or health issues by drawing on data from 58 interviews with Army veterans, spouses of Army veterans, and charity workers. By mapping participants trajectory from pre-military life to years after service, a holistic theorisation of the transition is provided using the tenets of ultra-realism.
It shows that, for most, merely being in employment was not an accurate measure of success. Instead, entrance to the civilian job market was characterised by precarity and intense competition between employees. This served as a dichotomy to the work environment veterans were familiar with and caused tension between the subject and the ideology they were assimilated to. In putting forward this argument, this book advances the existing ultra-realist theoretical framework and veteran research in an empirically informed manner.
By:
Emma Armstrong
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Weight: 494g
ISBN: 9781032797113
ISBN 10: 1032797118
Pages: 168
Publication Date: 04 February 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction, 1. Pre-Military Life: Absence and Desire, 2. Basic Training: ‘Pain is the Civilian Leaving your Body’, 3. Army Life: Conceptualising the Army Symbolic Order, 4. Operational Deployments: (En)Tropic Thunder, 5. Leaving the Army: Cutting the Umbilical Cord, 6. The Transition into Civilian Work, 7. Loss of the Tools of Disavowal: The Hurt (B)Locker, 8. Stuck in the Middle with Two…Symbolic Orders, Conclusion: Finding Clarity within the Charlie Foxtrot
Emma Armstrong is a Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Teesside University. Emma’s main interests include military veterans, victimology, contemporary criminological theory and violence.
Reviews for British Army Veterans’ Experiences of the Transition into Civilian Life: An Ultra-Realist Perspective
Emma Armstrong’s analysis of veterans and their complex transitions between military and neoliberal civilian life draws upon original empirical data and new conceptual frameworks to make a groundbreaking contribution. This book should be the cornerstone of any future research into military veterans. Professor Anthony Lloyd, Professor of Criminology, Teesside University In this book, Armstrong focuses upon the experiences of veterans routinely assumed to make ‘unproblematic’ transitions into civilian life. Synthesising detailed qualitative data with advanced criminological theory, Armstrong has produced a beautifully written critical account of the various harms experienced by those who attempt to re-integrate into neoliberalism’s competitive, atomised social world. Dr Anthony Ellis, Associate Professor in Criminology, University of Lincoln
