1. Contractors in Iraq: Exploited Class or Exclusive Club?
- Author
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Swed, Ori and Burland, Daniel
- Subjects
- *
PRIVATE military companies , *PRIVATE clubs , *CONTRACTORS , *PRECARIOUS employment , *CIVIL-military relations - Abstract
Corporate privatization of security has generated a neoliberal iteration of an old profession: the private military contractor. This development has revolutionized security policies across the globe while reviving old patterns of inequality. Following neoliberal logic, outsourcing fosters two types of employment: the exploitative and the exclusive. The first refers to low-status individuals hired en masse to perform menial labor; the second refers to experts who perform functions central to the employer's mission. We contribute to this discussion by focusing on the qualifications of a different subsample of this industry: American contractors who died while performing military and security functions in Iraq. We assert that such American employees directly engaged in mission-essential combat and security functions better fit the employment category of an exclusive, expert sector at the core of the private military industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2022
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