‘You’re Just Chopped Off at the End’: Retired Servicemen’s Identity Work Struggles in the Military to Civilian Transition

Rachel Williams, Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson, John Hockey and Adam Evans
Additional contact information
Rachel Williams: University of Lincoln, UK
Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson: University of Lincoln, UK
John Hockey: University of Gloucestershire, UK
Adam Evans: University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Sociological Research Online, 2018, vol. 23, issue 4, 812-829

Abstract: Promoting positive transition to retirement and cultural adaption for ex-service personnel has been identified as a priority for both social-science research and for public health policy in the UK. The Royal British Legion aims to provide support to service and retired service personnel, but to date the transition to retirement experiences of older (60-plus) ex-service personnel remain under-researched. In this article, we employ a symbolic interactionist theoretical framework to examine older servicemen’s experiences and identity challenges post-retirement from the British armed forces. Data were collected primarily through semi-structured, focus-group interviews with 20 former servicemen. Here, we focus specifically upon the challenges encountered by these ex-servicemen in the retirement transition from military to civilian life, a time of identity flux of sociological interest. To navigate this period of identity change and challenge, many participants constructed a ‘modified military self’ through involvement with the Royal British Legion as a key social support network. For many retired personnel the Royal British Legion offered a form of identification and group identity that resonated strongly with earlier experiences of comradeship in the military.

Keywords: ageing; identity work; military; symbolic interactionism; transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1360780418787209 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:812-829

DOI: 10.1177/1360780418787209

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Sociological Research Online
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().