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48 Armed Forces & Soc'y 3 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/amdfcsad48 and id is 1 raw text is: Article Armed Forces & Society 2022, Vol. 48(I) 3-24 © The Author(s) 2020 r iArticle reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions Exploited Class or DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20927471 journals.sagepub.com/homne/afs Exclusive Club? *SAGE Ori Swed' and Daniel Burland2 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 qualifica- tions 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. Keywords private military and security contractors, privatization, veterans, precarious employ- ment, expert workforce, civil-military relations, post-Fordist ' Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA 2 Behavioral Sciences Department, University of Saint Mary, Leavenworth, KS, USA Corresponding Author: Ori Swed, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Texas Tech University, Holden Hall 158, 2500 Broadway, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA. Email: ori.swed@ttu.edu