Abstract
ABSTRACTThis 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.
Highlights
Enloe’s (1989) question “Where are the women?” has been fundamental to showing how women remain indispensable to the waging of war
We ask: 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? Based on interviews with British national private security contractor spouses, we show the ways in which spouses of security contractors are called upon to support PMSCs
In comparison with research done on military households, the security industry can be seen as a greedy institution in what labor it demands of its workforce, and by extension, private security households
Summary
Enloe’s (1989) question “Where are the women?” has been fundamental to showing how women remain indispensable to the waging of war. Throughout the interviews, women spoke to how they had become conditioned through their lives as military wives, to manage on their own during long and sometimes unexpected separations, to be the primary and often sole caregivers for the children, and to accept that their husband’s military work took priority over their own careers This dynamic remained intact, and was even reinforced, when their husbands transitioned into private security work and continued to be away from home for extended periods of time. She prioritized her husband’s career and their marriage over her own pursuit of a career, normalizing military service and private security work as privileged and necessary, and reproducing a male breadwinner family model She celebrated the flexibility of the workplace because her primary focus continued to be sustaining a strong marriage by maintaining a happy household and making herself physically available when her husband was on leave from security work. Spousal support is legitimized through the broader celebration of neoliberalism as bringing flexibility and financial rewards and militarism as normalizing and privileging men’s work in private security
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