ALBERTSON, Katherine (2019). Relational legacies impacting on veteran transition from military to civilian life: trajectories of acquisition, loss and re-formulation of a sense of belonging. Illness, crisis & loss, 27 (4), 255-273. [Article]
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ALBERTSON Katherine - Veterans and belonging.pdf - Accepted Version
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ALBERTSON Katherine - Veterans and belonging.pdf - Accepted Version
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Abstract
The veteran cohort has been inextricably linked in the general public's mind by media generated
perceptions of high risk and fear of crime, echoed in wider contemporary debates linking issues of
place, social identity, social exclusion (Pain 2000) and a loss of belonging in wider communities
(Walklate 1998). Despite the growing interest in the longer term outcomes of transition from
military to civilian life from policy-makers, practitioners and academics, few qualitative studies
explore the social and relational impacts of this transitional experience on those who have
experienced it. Tensions and frustrations expressed by ex-forces personnel, engaging in addictions
services with a history of engagement in the criminal justice sector, are explored through the lens
of belongingness, loss and related citizenship frameworks to expose temporal impacts on the
acquisition, loss and reformulation of a sense of belonging across the life course. The relevance of
a significant loss of belonging in the transition from military to civilian life is useful, given the
widely accepted damaging consequences of having this need thwarted. This paper concludes that
a broader understanding of this largely disenfranchised grief (Doka, 2002) can enable more
informed reflexive opportunities to facilitate a valued military veteran citizenship status and
thereby contribute to the formulation of current policy debates concerning the veteran question.
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