Everyday Matters in Global Private Security Supply Chains: A Feminist Global Political Economy Perspective on Gurkhas in Private Security

Abstract

In a case study of Nepalese Gurkhas working for Western private military and security companies (PMSCs), this article develops feminist global political economy understandings of global labour chains by exploring how the 'global market' and the 'everyday' interact in establishing private security as a gendered and racialised project. Current understandings of PMSCs, and global markets at large, tend to depoliticise these global and everyday interactions by conceptualising the 'everyday' as common, mundane, and subsequently banal. Such understandings, we argue, not only conceal the everyday within private security, but also reinforce a conceptual dualism that enables the security industry to function as a gendered and racialised project. To overcome this dualism, this article offers a theoretically informed notion of the everyday that dissolves the hegemonic separation into 'everyday' and 'global' levels of analysis. Drawing upon ethnography, semistructured interviews, and discourse analysis of PMSCs' websites, the analysis demonstrates how race, gender, and colonial histories constitute global supply chains for the security industry, rest upon and reinforce racialised and gendered migration patterns, and depend upon, as well as shape, the everyday lives and living of Gurkha men and women.

Militarized social reproduction: women’s labour and parastate armed conflict

“…Similarly, Alexander's research on militarization practices identifies the multiple ways in which militarization is experienced through the bodies of people, and equally importantly, the multiple ways in which people resist this in their everyday lives (Alexander 2016, 871). Finally, Chisholm and Stachowitsch's work on the experience of Nepalese private-security contractors extends our understanding of how broader political-economy processes coalesce at the level of the individual (Chisholm and Stachowitsch 2016). They illustrate the gendered (and racialized) logic of global value chains that frames certain men in the Global South as uniquely suited for military work (Chisholm and Stachowitsch 2016, 820), akin to the gendered narratives positioning women in these same countries as 'naturally' inclined for factory work due to their 'docile' nature and 'nimble fingers' (Elson and Pearson 1981, 93).…”

“…Feminist analyses of both the causes and consequences of conflict have made women, and the gendered underpinnings of peace and conflict, visible (Tickner 1992;Enloe 2017). In these works, militarizationand subsequent war makingis understood to rely on specific notions of femininity and masculinity to maintain support, creating a gendered hierarchy wherein that which is deemed masculine is privileged (Chisholm and Stachowitsch 2016;Enloe 2000;Peterson 2010). Of particular interest for this article is how feminist studies reveal that militarization extends into spaces supposedly disconnected from overt conflict, such as 'ordinary daily routines' and everyday activities undertaken in the household (Elias 2017;Elias and Gunawardana 2013).…”

Private Military and Security Labour Migration: The Case of Fiji

“…We aim to contribute to this emerging literature by exploring the voices and experiences of Fijians contracted by PMSCs for deployment in conflict zones. Similar to the Gurkhas, Fijians are amongst those categorised as a "martial race", which makes Fiji a key PMSC labour supplier along with Nepal, Uganda and Kenya (Stachowitsch and Chisholm, 2016). Furthermore, like the Gurkhas, Fijians experience highly exploitative and physically and psychologically consequential relations with PMSCs, which has received scant research attention.…”

“…Pioneering studies by Chisholm (2014a, b), Stachowitsch and Chisholm (2016) and others (e.g. Eichler, 2015) provide critical analyses of the gendered and racialised hierarchies reproduced by PMSCs' global recruitment practices from feminist, masculinities studies and postcolonial perspectives.…”

“…Pangerl, 2007;Voigt-Graf, 2005) and temporary migration of skilled workers such as nurses and teachers (e.g. Reddy et al, 2004;Voigt-Graf et al, 2007).…”