From warfare to welfare: veterans, military charities and the blurred spatiality of post-service welfare in the United Kingdom

Agatha Herman and Richard Yarwood

Environment and Planning A, 2015, vol. 47, issue 12, 2628-2644

Abstract: The military offers a form of welfare-for-work but when personnel leave they lose this safety net, a loss exacerbated by the rollback neoliberalism of the contemporary welfare state. Increasingly the third sector has stepped in to address veterans’ welfare needs through operating within and across military/civilian and state/market/community spaces and cultures. In this paper we use both veterans’ and military charities’ experiences to analyse the complex politics that govern the liminal boundary zone of post-military welfare. Through exploring ‘crossing’ and ‘bridging’ we conceptualise military charities as ‘boundary subjects’, active yet dependent on the continuation of the civilian-military binary, and argue that the latter is better understood as a multidirectional, multiscalar and contextual continuum. Post-military welfare emerges as a competitive, confused and confusing assemblage that needs to be made more navigable in order to better support the ‘heroic poor’.

Keywords: military geography; welfare; veterans; transition; military charities; boundaries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:12:p:2628-2644

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X15614844

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