Reproductions of global security: accounting for the private security household

Abstract

This article shows how private security households exist at the nexus of two foundational logics of contemporary warfare-militarism and neoliberalism. The celebration of neoliberalism and normalization of militarism allow the private security industry to draw upon the labor of eager contractors and their supportive spouses. This article develops a feminist analysis of the role of the private security household in global security assemblages. In what ways are households connected to the outsourcing of security work to Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), and how are these connections gendered? Through interviews with female spouses of former UK Special Air Services soldiers, now private security contractors, we demonstrate how the household is both silenced and yet indispensable to how PMSCs operate and how liberal states conduct war. These spouses supported the transition from military service to private security work, managed the household, and planned their careers or sacrificed them to accommodate their husband's security work. Their gendered labor was conditioned by former military life but animated by neoliberal market logics. For the most part, the women we interviewed normalized the militarized values of their husband's work and celebrated the freedom and financial rewards this type of security work brought.

Disparities and Diversification: Feminists in Europe Study War and/or Militaries

“…While perhaps primarily rooted in the traditions of feminist security studies, feminist scholarship on militaries draws on insights from studies of political economy (Chisholm and Eichler 2018;Chisholm and Stachowitsch 2016;Hedström 2020), from postcolonial theory (Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2013;Henry 2012), and from disciplines including anthropology (Parashar 2013) and sociology (Carreiras 2006). Increasingly, many interested scholars identify their work as located within the interdisciplinary field of feminist Critical Military Studies (CMS).…”

“…Civilian women married to servicemen are often described as situated in liminal space, on the borders of the military and civilian spheres (Eriksson Baaz and Verweijen 2017). Despite their lack of status as full members of military communities, however, a significant body of work has detailed the central importance of the unpaid reproductive labor performed by civilian women in intimate relationships with servicemen-in state militaries among both regulars Catignani 2018, 2020;Eriksson Baaz and Verweijen 2017;Gray 2016b;Hyde 2016) and reservists (Basham and Catignani 2020), in parastate armed groups (Hedström 2020), and in private military security companies (Chisholm and Eichler 2018). This labor is crucial to military organizations, reproducing the individual soldier in much the same way as women's reproductive labor in capitalist systems enables men to participate in the labor market as workers, and thereby enabling armed organizations to wage war (Hedström 2020; see also Ware 2012: 207).…”

“The Strength behind the Uniform”: Acknowledging the Contributions of Military Families or Co-Opting Women’s Labour?

“…Issue 41.2 / 2020 60 labour in the private sphere (Basham and Catignani 2018;Chisholm and Eichler 2018;Gray 2016;Hyde 2016). It follows from the gendering of spheres that only some labour is deemed relevant to global security practices (Chisholm and Stachowitsch 2016, 826; see also Elias and Rai 2015;Elias and Roberts 2016).…”

“…is represents a departure from previous eras, which took for granted the "natu ralness" of a gendered division of labour in military households in support of organizational goals. Femi nist scholarship reveals the ways in which militaries are indebted to the everyday, reproductive labour of women in the household Catignani 2020, 2018;Chisholm and Eichler 2018;Enloe 2000Enloe , [1983Enloe ] 1988. As articulated in the Atlantis (2001) special issue on "Women and the Canadian Military" published 20 years ago, combat readiness, specifically deployments, do not just happen at the level of the in stitution, but require the deliberate work of women at various stages in the process, in the family and in the home (Norris 2001).…”

Global security assemblages: mapping the field

“…The range goes from the feminist perspective, over sociology, to criminology. For instance, in the feminist perspective, research looked at how global security assemblages affect contractors´ households (Chisholm & Eichler, 2018) and how gender is affected by private security in global politics (Eichler, 2015). Within the sociology approach, Bongiovi (2016) used global security assemblages to demonstrate the setup and operations of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.…”