After World War II, 600,000 of Japan’s former Korean colonial subjects remained there and have never been granted automatic citizenship. Nor have their descendants.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui and Hwa Ji Shin (Social Problems, August 2008) suggest that the ongoing struggle of these resident Koreans provides a good test of theories about how local activism and international human rights movements contribute to political change inside a country. The authors examined four different campaigns to decipher the conditions under which resident Koreans won better conditions for themselves.

In the fight over mandatory fingerprinting of resident Koreans and other aliens, for example, a combination of activism at home and international consensus on rights helped finally abolish the law in 1992. In contrast, attempts to achieve the right to Korean ethnic education haven’t made much headway. Infighting among North and South Koreans on the ground over what kind of education they want has stalled the impact of the international pressure in their favor.

Ultimately, this analysis suggests that while international human rights standards is indispensable to the success of local movements, the opposite is also true: without a strong local movement, international standards alone may not be enough to improve the situation on the ground. M.K.

fruit of the non-kosher vine

The Israeli wine industry is booming, yet most new wineries aren’t following the strict laws of kosher vinting. Tal Simons and Peter Roberts (Administrative Science Quarterly, June 2008) argue this is due to the prior “non-local” winemaking experiences of Israeli vinters. Even when the kosher rules of the local industry were well established, winemakers educated or employed in Napa Valley and elsewhere were able to introduce non-kosher wine practices to the region. Kosher winemaking may have been more common, but exposure to new ideas abroad uncorked a new vintage. W.L.

much ado…for nothing

Many Americans were angry about the events of 9/11, but a study by Kraig Beyerlein and David Sikkink (Social Problems, May 2008) finds those with the most anger often fail to put their time, resources, and money where their mouths are.

Past research on civic engagement has revealed that anger is a motivating factor in joining a social movement, while sorrow and empathy drive people to volunteer time and resources to assist in natural disaster relief.

Using data from the 2002 Religion and Public Activism Survey, the authors found that people with personal connections to the events and those who strongly identify with patriotic values were among the most likely to volunteer in 9/11 relief efforts.

People who felt enraged did little to assist in relief efforts, yet those who felt empathy for victims were more likely to help, the authors learned. Those who offered the greatest amount of assistance often developed personal connections to victims through participation in community or religious vigils. Because of their higher levels of religiosity, women and African Americans were more likely to volunteer their time to assist victims, the study showed, and New Yorkers who lived close to the site of the attack were empathetic and drawn to volunteer, regardless of their religious ties. K.H.

muchachas on the move

The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the flow of undocumented female migrants from Mexico. Although men and women crossing the border have increasingly similar demographic profiles, there’s significant variation in how they cross and the likelihood they’ll be caught.

Using data from household surveys in 107 communities in Mexico between 1987 and 2004, Katharine Donato, Brandon Wagner, and Evelyn Patterson (International Migration Review, 2008) find women are more likely to attempt clandestine crossings with a paid smuggler, while men are more likely to cross alone.

Crossing with smugglers in high profile areas increases the chances of being apprehended. A woman making her first trip was more likely to be caught than a man, and even seasoned women face a greater likelihood of being caught than men, the study shows.

The estimated 2 million undocumented Mexican women living in the United States represent the changing face of a migrant stream once overwhelmingly composed of men. The task now is to better understand how their gender helps or hinders the journey. S.G.

are you there god? it’s me, a poor teen

Poverty not only affects American teenagers’ self-esteem, educational achievements, and life chances, but it also influences their faith, according to Philip Schwadel (Sociology of Religion, Summer 2008). Poor adolescents differ from their non-poor counterparts in religious beliefs and practices.

Using data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, Schwadel finds poor teens are more likely to have active, but private, religious lives and they’re much less likely to participate in institutional religion. Moreover, poor teens are more likely to see their faith as important to their daily lives, but its salience comes from personal prayer and scripture reading, rather than attending services, Sunday school, or youth group activities. Finally, poor teens are less likely than non-poor teens to believe in life after death, but are significantly more likely to believe there will be a judgment day for God to reward and punish.

Religious faith can help teens through their confusing adolescent years, and whether or not they live in poverty seems to help explain what that religious experience will look like. S.G.

it’s raining demography, hallelujah

Few social science surveys include questions about sexual orientation, making it difficult to track trends about lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations. And because the Census only captures a subset of the sexual minority population who “out” themselves by indicating they cohabit with a partner of the same sex, single and non-cohabiting sexual minorities aren’t included in such analyses.

Christopher Carpenter and Gary J. Gates (Demography, August 2008) recently made a breakthrough on this front, completing the first systematic analysis of same-sex partnership trends in the United States. They use two representative California public health surveys to compare trends among sexual minorities with regard to who couples up, who cohabits, and who seeks relationship recognition from the state.

They find partnership rates for lesbians are nearly the same as those for straight women, but gay men partner at a much lower rate than comparable heterosexual men. Furthermore, partnered gay men and lesbians tend to be older, are more likely to be white, and more highly educated on average than non-partnered gay men and lesbians.

These demographic differences hold even when comparing same-sex couples who choose to have their relationships recognized by the state to those who don’t. 

These results suggest generalizations drawn about sexual minority populations from the 2000 Census paint a rosier picture of the socioeconomic well-being of all sexual minorities than is actually the case. T.O.

jesus and the gang

Pentecostal Christians in Honduras have a little extra security from gang violence, and his name is Jesus.

Based on ethnography and interviews with youth there, Jon Wolseth (Latin American Perspectives, July 2008) found young men have converted in order to deal with the violence that surrounds them.

Pentecostalism offers Honduran men an alternative way of living that gangs respect. Converted men are seen as “domesticated” because their new ethics prohibit drinking, drugs, and dancing. Also, gangs respect “cristianos” because they’re seen as close to God—which means messing with one may result in divine retribution.

Following the path of Christ, then, becomes an opportunity for some men to avoid getting involved in a gang or a valid reason to leave a criminal past behind. It also gives converts newly meaningful lives. By internalizing a new set of values, including a belief in “sanctuary,” they create a protective social space apart from everyday violence.

As long as the adherent continues to demonstrate his religious commitment through action, God will protect him. This belief gives young men a narrative to explain experiences with gang aggression—from narrow escapes to heavenly justice being leveled against perpetrators. R.A.

i do give a damn about my bad reputation

If you’ve ever wondered how high-powered talent agents get their stars to show them the money, Stephen Zafirau has an answer in his recent article on “reputation work” in the Hollywood talent industry (Qualitative Sociology, June 2008).

After spending seven months at a Hollywood talent management company, Zafirau discovered that creating and maintaining a good reputation is a fundamental part of the everyday work of Hollywood agents and managers.

From fine-tuning the layout of their office furniture to practicing a confident and aggressive form of self-presentation, agents spend a great deal of time and energy on seemingly mundane tasks simply in order to meet industry-wide expectations for a “good agent.” How well an agent does these many “little” things, Zafirau’s subjects told him, makes the difference between a successful or mediocre career.

Reputation is important in many industries, of course, but the author argues it’s especially important in fickle and rapidly-changing culture industries, which offer few sure markers of agents’ competency and even fewer guaranteed pathways for client success. Amid this uncertainty, the perception that an agent is competent becomes the surest sign of competency itself and a stabilizing feature in an otherwise volatile business. D.W.

betting on addiction

Millions of dollars have been wagered on whether or not excessive gambling is a problem of neurological proportions. Indeed, drugs like naltrexone—originally used to fight heroin addiction in the 1960s—have become silver bullets for curbing urges to gamble deep inside the brain.

But like any good casino game, things aren’t what they seem. According to Scott Vrecko (Economy and Society, February 2008), irresponsible gambling didn’t become a medical problem until the gaming industry itself stepped up to the table.

With start-up money from the gambling industry, the National Center for Responsible Gambling (NCRG) was established in 1996 to sponsor research on pathological gambling addictions. Since then, researchers funded by the center have churned out hundreds of articles on the subject; at Harvard, NCRG even financed an institute on pathological betting and related disorders.

As more research is conducted on pathological gambling, thinking about gambling in non-medical terms becomes harder. Too many casinos, the lack of will power, and more sociological factors aren’t the problem—it’s the brain. This study reminds us that moral problems can become medical ones when vested interests step in. W.L.

old churches never die

The national mortality rate for U.S. religious congregations—just 1 percent since 1988—is among the lowest ever observed for any type of organization, according to Shawna Anderson and colleagues (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, June 2008).

Sociologists have long been interested in when and why organizations decline, dissolve, and die. They’ve looked at the demise of everything from volunteer service organizations (which close at a rate of 2.3 percent) and California wineries (5 percent) to peace movements (9 percent) and chapters of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (7 percent). But few studies examine the rate at which congregations close their doors.

Based on data from the 1998 National Congregations Study, Anderson and her colleagues argue religious groups are so resilient because these “minimalist organizations” cost very little to start and maintain, and they remain flexible in the face of obstacles. A congregation doesn’t have to be a thriving, suburban mega-church with a large membership and huge budget to survive. In fact, a small, rural congregation with six members and a volunteer rabbi can also stay alive—and be well—in the American religious landscape. D.W.

good corruption, bad corruption

The bribes and payouts orchestrated by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies were extraordinary, even for Washington.

But while Abramoff’s exploits hinted at a government in disarray, plenty of governments function just fine with high levels of bribery and embezzlement. According to Keith Darden (Politics and Society, March 2008), corruption in the right context can actually build loyalty among officials and uphold public order.

Darden analyzed publicly available (secretly) taped conversations between former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma and his underlings to understand how one of the most corrupt states in the world was still effective at collecting taxes and fighting crime.

When officials used graft to buy compliance from subordinates, it reinforced the established state hierarchy, thus ensuring a high level of performance. Kuchma encouraged officials to take a “second salary” from their own departments, and they complied, recognizing that keeping their job (and avoiding prison) meant obeying Kuchma and keeping his accountants happy.

To some, this was corruption of the worst kind. However, it clearly facilitated governance when the rule of law was weak. Of course, widespread corruption only lasts as long as the general public will take it. As Darden points out, the Orange Revolution in 2004 led to the overthrow of the decade-long Kuchma regime. Perhaps it was too much corruption—even for Ukraine. W.L.

psst, you taking calculus next year?

Even as the differences in math proficiency between the sexes seem to be disappearing, differences between the math courses taken by girls and boys in American high schools remain.

According to Kenneth Frank and his co-authors (American Journal of Sociology, May 2008), we can look to girls’ classmates for clues about why they sign up for more advanced math courses.

Previous research has shown that teenagers are pretty secure in their friendships and therefore peer pressure from friends holds little sway. The authors argue the more relevant group for peer pressure is the kids with whom a teen takes many courses in common.

Because these classmates are a teen’s most likely potential pool of friends, the researchers theorized that their choice of math courses would be influenced by an attempt to fit in with the kids they wanted to be friends with, rather than those who are already their friends.

The results of the study show this peer influence had an effect on girls, but not boys. Although the research couldn’t necessarily explain why this would be so, the result is troublesome for those hoping the gap between girls and boys will continue to narrow. M.K.

foster care not as bad as we thought

Deciphering whether something is the cause of a social problem or its effect is the stuff of good sociology, and despite the prevailing assumption that foster care sets kids up to fare worse during adulthood, a new study challenges whether it’s actually true.

Stephanie Cosner Berzin (Social Service Review, August 2008) argues the social and family environments many foster kids come from, and not foster care itself, are to blame for the poverty, low educational attainment, and high rates of incarceration many foster kids face as adults.

To test this for the first time, Berzin used a sophisticated statistical technique known as propensity score matching to simulate an experiment on a nationally representative sample of young adults. Comparing the transitions of 120 foster kids to a “matched” sample of comparable kids who were never in foster care, Brezin found few differences.

According to the analysis, kids from comparable social backgrounds (in terms of neighborhoods, socioeconomic status, and other factors) fare no better during their transition to adulthood than their counterparts in foster care. Though foster care certainly didn’t improve the outcome, it also didn’t hurt foster kids’ futures, Berzin found. A.B.

risks of the rich and pregnant

Being wealthy and with-child has its own unique dangers, according to a new study in the Journal of Epidemiology (August 2008).

Mélissa Généreux and colleagues took the novel approach of analyzing how indirect exposure to traffic-related pollution may lead to preterm births and/or low birth weight in newborns. They claim that soon-to-be-mothers are impacted differently depending on their socioeconomic status (SES) and the neighborhoods they live in, but not in the expected ways.

In poorer neighborhoods there are no significant birth risks of living within 200 meters of a highway. But in wealthy neighborhoods, this same distance increases the odds of a preterm birth by 58 percent and low birth weight by 81 percent.

Researchers speculate that low SES mothers are exposed to so many other hazards in their environments that living near a highway is mostly irrelevant. Conversely, high SES women significantly undo the health benefits of living a high-SES lifestyle if they live near a highway. A.B.

rolling the dice with capitalist market reform

In a capitalist market, the winners and losers are clearly marked by their financial status, but they may be separated by their stress levels as well. Wei-Hsin Yu (Social Problems, August 2008) uses a nationally representative survey of urban Chinese residents to find out how the transition from a state-organized to a market economy is affecting their mental health.

Yu finds the transition has a positive impact on the psychological well-being of those in provinces that have the highest levels of private employment. However, since this holds true for individuals across a variety of income levels, positive mental health may result not from improvements brought about by a market economy, but rather by a belief in the possibilities such a change brings.

This points to the idea that the higher wages (or possibility thereof) in the private sector offsets the stress brought on by job insecurity. However, those in the formerly collectivized sector, now open to the whims of the market, had significant decreases in their psychological well-being.

It turns out in the craps game of free-market capitalism, winning or losing affects more than just your pocketbook. J.W.

Some can be a bit edgy, others are insightful and often amusing. But all are passionate and reaffirm our belief that we have as dedicated a following as any academic publication out there.

One of our current favorites is from a loyal reader who told us about how, instead of stacking back issues on a shelf in his office, he leaves them in choice locations—the coffee shop magazine rack, the gym, the waiting room at the doctor’s office—for others to pick up and peruse.

This small act of guerilla marketing is a wonderful reminder of Contexts’ overarching mission and goal: to bring sociology to broader, previously untapped audiences and public attention. With the help of the American Sociological Association’s media folks, in fact, we’ve had some successes recently on this front.

Robin Simon, for example, was featured in Newsweek, among other media outlets, after her piece on the stresses of parenting—also excerpted in the Utne Reader—appeared in these pages last spring. We were similarly gratified to see media using Jen’an Read’s contribution to our fall issue to help inform public understandings of Muslims in America. And we don’t think it was coincidental that David Brooks used the phrase “self-immolation express” in his syndicated New York Times column not long after our article on the topic (by Michael Biggs) appeared in the same issue in which Brooks himself was interviewed by Jerry Jacobs.

We like to think our new website, contexts.org, has played a role here as well. Our various blogs now get thousands of hits each day. And these online readers also practice guerilla marketing, linking to Contexts sites to spread the sociological word. If you haven’t had a chance yet, visit contexts.org to check out the Contexts Crawler, which tracks sociology in the national and inter national media, the popular Sociological Images blog, or one of our new podcasts.

Of course, there’s still a good deal of work left to do before we achieve total media saturation. But now that we have our feet under us, we will continue to spread the Contexts gospel, one strategically placed piece of sociology at a time.

Listen to the podcast interview with Jose!

When I was young I never questioned the make-up of our family, and for many years wasn’t even aware of how we were different. Then one summer while home from college I went through a family photo album and came across the first pictures taken of my parents with my brother. The photographs were breathtaking. I sat in tears as I thought about this spectacular event in my family’s history that I knew very little about.

Seeing these images opened up a whole new world for me and sparked a curiosity that has kept me asking questions ever since. From that summer on I have photographed adoptive families and had the privilege of documenting international, interracial, single, and gay- and lesbian-parent families. With each project I find another piece to the puzzle and I learn more about myself, my family, and what it means to become a family.

In 2006 I experienced the other side of the adoption equation during the nine months I spent in Ethiopia as a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow through the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Placed with an organization called Hope for Children, which supports children whose families have been affected by HIV and allows them to stay within their own communities, I saw the efforts Ethiopians are making to support as many children as they can.

But, too, I saw the pain developing countries feel when they have no choice but to send their children abroad. In addition to being a life-changing experience, this exposure was essential in my quest to understand adoption. Having only seen adoption from the perspective of the adoptive family, I hadn’t seen the entire picture. Although I spent time in only one country and one community, seeing these harsh realities helped me gain a more critical eye and realize the circumstances and pressures felt by communities worldwide.

Upon returning from Ethiopia I met Alison Aucoin. After surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans she was starting her life over again in Durham, N.C., and was in the early stages of adopting from Ethiopia. Soon after we were introduced we decided to collaborate to document her adoption experience.

During the 14 months that followed we used audio and photographs to record the preparations and adjustments Alison was making for her baby and her life as a mother. In July 2008 we traveled to Ethiopia to bring home one-year old Edelawit, which means “the lucky one” in Amharic.

Alison has experienced a range of emotions, from intense joy to grief to sorrow. Because she had to remove Ella, as she is now called, from her caretakers and culture in order to start their life together, the happiness that Alison feels has been tempered by sadness.

Through her own feelings of loss after Hurricane Katrina, Alison has an intense awareness of the pain created by sudden displacement and disconnection from home. The experience of going to Ethiopia also made her conscious of the sadness the entire country feels as they are forced to seek help from abroad for their children.

The photographs in this essay illustrate a small part of the journey Alison, Ella, and I have taken together and offer a glimpse of the complexity of international adoption.

About 30 percent of today’s young people will earn a bachelor’s or higher degree. That just barely exceeds the 27 percent of baby boomers who earned a B.A. And while our country slowed higher education to a crawl, the rest of the world vastly increased their investments. Several small countries have passed the United States in college graduation rates, and now big competitors like Japan, France, and the United Kingdom are closing in.

Don’t blame the young people. Sure the temptations of sex, drugs, and video games fell some promising high schoolers. But most graduates are ready, willing, and able to go on. Rising tuition keeps some out. Cost turns out to be far from the most important impediment, though. Financial aid and loans could solve the higher education problem if cost were the only problem.

Admissions and enrollment are deeper and more difficult problems. America’s colleges and universities turn away millions of applicants every spring. Universities that once had “restrictive” admission rates in the neighborhood of 30 percent now admit 10 percent of applicants. State universities that used to take all high school graduates who had a C or C+ average now reject one-third or more of their applicants.

Once inside the college gate, students bump up against enrollment restrictions. Very few colleges and universities have a reliable system of tying their course offerings to admissions. As a consequence, many freshman end up being denied enrollment in the entry-level courses they’ll need to start working on a major.

My oldest son had that experience. He went to San Francisco State University and told anyone who would listen he was “majoring in left-overs.” He persisted to graduation and is currently putting his creative writing degree to good use working as an accountant in New York City. But many of his cohort didn’t stick it out. After two years of acquiring five-figure debt and left-over courses, they left college for “a semester” to take a job and pay down their debt. Many never made it back. The registrar’s office calls it “stopping out.”

To solve its admissions and enrollment crisis, America needs to reinvigorate public investment in higher education. The private sector charts its own course and responds to market forces too slowly, if at all. Total enrollment at private four-year colleges has grown 0.9 percent per year since 1945 without waver or fluctuation. The privates aren’t keeping up with population growth, let alone responding to the nation’s need for more college graduates.

And why should they? They’re prospering mightily under the present system. Tight admissions hurt young people and the national economy, but the endowments of private universities bloom like never before.

Public investment worked like a charm for the baby boom. In the late 1960s states dramatically created new opportunities by building new campuses and raising enrollment quotas on old ones. The college graduation rate, already rising, accelerated despite unprecedented population growth. The engine of opportunity was running on all cylinders.

Suddenly, in the late 1970s, public four-year institutions stopped growing. Tax revolts, prison-building booms, and unfunded federal mandates for programs like Medicaid eliminated governors’ discretionary spending. Since then we have seen retrenchment and recovery but precious little growth. The engine of opportunity sputtered.

Nobody questions the fact that public investment in higher education pays off for taxpayers. Big studies in Texas and California show each dollar invested in higher education yields between $3 and $5 of returns in the form of future taxes or savings on welfare, prison, and social service spending.

The annual spring panic over college admissions and ever-rising tuition are symptoms of a broken higher education system. The deep source is under-investment. The private sector marches on impervious to outside influences like economic conditions or national priorities. The public sector is shackled by 30 years of anti-tax activism. A few bright spots exist at places like the University of Florida and Arizona State. For the American economy to compete in the 21st century, the rest of the nation will need to expand higher education opportunities.

by deborah carr

For many demographers, old fears of too many people in the world have been replaced by new fears of too few people. In most developed and a growing number of developing nations, population experts worry birth rates have dropped to such a low point that their populations are no longer “replacing” themselves.

Purchase this article from UC Press

youth will be served

by jeff goodwin

The 2008 election will be remembered for how, in troubled economic times, virtually all demographic groups voted more heavily for the Democrats. But 2008 also reflects a generational transition: Younger voters ages 18 to 29 played the single largest role in the decline in the Republican vote between 2004 and 2008.

Purchase this article from UC Press

Throughout most of the 20th century, warring nation-states generally had two options to increase their military strength.

They could create a coalition—as the United States did in World War II—or institute a draft—as it did in Vietnam.

Today, though, countries have a third option. Rent.

Hiring private military corporations, sometimes called private security corporations or private security firms, has fast become a popular way for nations to fight wars.

As a result, much of today’s military workforce isn’t part of the military at all. These military contractors come from across the globe and challenge how we think about nations, states, citizens, and how to exercise accountability in war.

For example, when a Panamanian subsidiary of an American firm hires Colombians to fight Iraqis, which country is responsible for their welfare and answers for their crimes? Which public is likely to mount an anti-war campaign or launch a yellow ribbon drive? And whom do they target? These questions, and the answers to them, have significant consequences for how war gets waged, when it stops, and who’s accountable for it.

Listen to Katherine McCoy discuss private military corporations on the Contexts Podcast.

These private companies have become major players in all types of modern warfare. Many scholars have focused on the increasing role these corporations play in weak states, especially in Africa, where they are significant domestic players in civil conflict and resource wars. Some, like Stephen Brayton, worry that in failed states, corporations are gaining the “civic and political loyalty” that should belong to the military or police, yet are accountable only to the elites who hire them.

Military companies, though, are as much a tool of the strong as the weak.

the move to private military corporations

Scholars have long thought of fighting wars as something nation-states did through their citizens. Max Weber famously defined the modern state as holding a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, meaning that only state agents—usually soldiers or police—were allowed to wield force. In contrast to pre-modern Europe, in which local rulers often hired mercenaries to protect their kingdoms, modern states largely put aside the mercenary option in favor of standing armies composed primarily of citizens dedicated (officially, at least) to protecting the entire nation. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, international law was developed based on this idea of the nation-state.

There were, of course, exceptions to this rule. In the American Revolutionary War the British hired Hessians to fight the colonists, while some mercenaries on the American side became famous war heroes. Even as late as the 1970s European colonial powers hired mercenaries to defeat African “liberation” movements, prompting the United Nations to propose an international treaty against mercenarism. Despite such exceptions, the shift from premodern to modern warfare was marked by the idea that, from here on out, states did—and should—fight wars with their own militaries. Mercenaries appeared as an occasional threat to governments and international order, but only a marginal threat, and one that was waning.

But just as the sun seemed to set on the individual mercenary, it rose on the era of the military corporation. Private military corporations (PMCs) are legal entities that supply governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and industry with private soldiers, often referred to as guards or simply “contractors.”

The first modern PMCs can be traced back to the Vietnam War. What made the rise of these organizations possible, explains the Brookings Institution’s P.W. Singer in Corporate Warriors, is the combination of the end of the Cold War, the subsequent downsizing of armies, the availability of smaller high-tech weaponry, and the ideological trend toward outsourcing and privatizing government functions.

Some argue that PMCs are a stronger, more organized form of mercenarism, while others claim they’re a natural extension of the defense industry’s shift from providing goods to providing services. Contractors today provide nearly all the services previously performed by soldiers in war zones, from guarding bases to interrogating prisoners to developing military strategy.

Since the 1990s, PMCs have taken on increasingly larger roles in war and military campaigns. In fact, the ratio of military contractors to soldiers has climbed with each U.S. military intervention since the 1991 Gulf War, such that more private contractors work in the Iraq War than soldiers. And there’s no reason to expect this trend to slow down. Already estimated at more than $100 billion, the PMC market is projected to be worth between $150 billion and $200 billion by 2010.

logistics of pmcs

Governments that contract PMCs have practical reasons for doing so. One is cost. Using contractors instead of public employees saves the government from paying employees’ pensions or peacetime salaries, potentially producing long-term savings. In the short term, however, open-ended contracts and hefty pricetags make contractors more expensive than soldiers. Thus, the true cost of contracting remains an open debate.

Perhaps more important than cost is strategy. PMCs can be rapidly deployed in unanticipated, short-term conflicts.

As such, they can free up soldiers for more sustained military work on other fronts. Moreover, outsourcing “tail-end” jobs, such as laundry and construction, to civilians reduces the demands on a stretched national army.

Many analysts argue a reliance on contractors has allowed the United States to pursue two simultaneous wars despite the 1990s military downsizing. But in countries with weak armies, PMCs can provide a decisive military boost. Sierra Leone is the classic example—it successfully used Executive Outcomes, a South African PMC, to drive back rebels from the capital city in the mid-1990s.

While most PMCs are headquartered in militarily powerful countries such as the United States, Britain, and Israel, a disproportionate number of the PMC workforce itself comes from the global South. According to a survey conducted by the PMC industry’s think tank, the Peace Operations Institute, in U.S. operations only about 10 percent of contracted workers are Americans, while 60 percent belong to the country in which military operations are taking place (Iraqis in Iraq, for example) and 30 percent come from other countries. A Congressional Research Services report reveals those numbers are fairly representative of U.S. efforts in Iraq, with a slightly higher percentage of contractors (65 percent) being Iraqi and about one-quarter being other foreigners.

That last group, called “third-country nationals,” (TCNs) is made up of workers from around the world. They are routinely paid about one-tenth of what their American counterparts earn. Host-country nationals (HCNs) tend to be paid wages commensurate with local jobs.

The international composition of the PMC workforce is notable. Former Haliburton subsidiary KBR alone has employees from 38 different countries working in Iraq. Some third-country nationals—Filipinos and Indians, for example—perform the bulk of support work on American military bases, such as laundry and food service, while others—especially Nepalese, South Africans, and Latin Americans—are hired for security work. The latter usually come from countries with a recent history of counterinsurgency or other claims to military expertise.

Despite the division between those performing more “tooth-end” and “tail-end” jobs, in war all are vulnerable to attack. The chart above shows the breakdown of contractor casualties in Iraq by job type.

consequences of contractors

The move to PMCs changes the entire spectrum of military labor. It marks a dual shift in the way we think of a military labor force: from public to private, and from domestic to international. This shift affects more than the clothes people wear in war or the languages they speak on base. It undermines old lines of accountability. Military historian Martin van Crevald argues the monopoly over force meant that in war, “it is the government that directs, the army that fights, and the people who suffer.” This may be a dysfunctional relationship, but one with the potential to curb violence nonetheless.

To the extent that the state, the army, and the people all represent the same nation, their fates are interconnected. In democratic countries, “the people” must approve the government’s decision to send the military, and they might retract that approval as military casualties start mounting. Having public, national forces fight wars helps the whole nation experience and internalize their costs. Citizens see “our men and women in uniform” being shipped off to war and the flag-draped coffins when those same soldiers don’t make it home alive. This helps bring the costs of war home to the voting public.

In contrast, using PMCs externalizes the costs of war and outsources accountability. As private employees, contractors don’t leave the same impression on public consciousness that soldiers do, and they’re less amenable to public oversight.

This is truer for some contractors than others. Recent history shows deaths or disappearances of American contractors do make political waves in the United States. Military analysts James Manker and Kent Williams point out that, “Regardless of where the responsibility is placed contractually, [when American contractors are involved] the media reports it as a U.S. casualty, a U.S. captive, or a U.S. wounded without respect to who is at fault.” Indeed, author Jeremy Scahill points out that the 2004 deaths of four Americans working for Blackwater in Fallujah made headlines in the United States for days, and the 2003 capture of three American contractors by FARC guerrillas in Colombia led to ongoing Congressional inquiries throughout their five years of captivity.

Captured or killed foreign contractors don’t receive such treatment. For instance, there was limited political response in the United States when insurgents captured and beheaded 12 Nepalese contractors working in conjunction with the U.S. mission in Iraq. For this very reason, companies sometimes enlist foreign contractors for high-risk or high-visibility roles, such as gunners or pilots. This first became evident to me during my fieldwork on PMCs in Colombia, when I asked a State Department employee why Central Americans were flying U.S.-sponsored counter-drug and counter-insurgency missions there.

“Since these are combat missions, [the U.S. government] didn’t want American pilots flying because of risk and liability,” he responded.

The pattern seems to hold in some other contexts. A Swisspeace report notes that in Afghanistan, security-heavy PMCs such as Blackwater, Dyncorp, and ArmorGroup have some of the highest ratios of third-country nationals. Indeed, some military analysts consider the relative invisibility of foreign contractors to be one of privatization’s key benefits. As a 2005 Rand report notes, the advantages of PMCs are greatest “when policymakers worry less about the safety of non-American contract personnel than about American lives.”

In Iraq, non-American contractors are the hidden casualties of war. Among state-supported coalition troops, Americans make up 93 percent of the casualties. Among contractors, they represent only 43 percent of casualties. The rest are third-country nationals from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This percentage would be even smaller if Iraqi contractor deaths were included, but such data are not currently available. Because they aren’t Americans, Iraqi and third-country contractor deaths generally aren’t reported in U.S. newspapers, even though contractors work side-by-side with coalition troops.

Using contractors—especially foreigners—also makes it difficult to determine who’s legally responsible when something goes wrong. This is a problem both for protecting contractors’ welfare and for holding them accountable for crimes. For example, in Iraq there have been widespread reports of PMCs confiscating foreign contractors’ passports and keeping contractors against their will. This led the Defense Department to issue a memorandum in 2006 calling on the companies to clean up their act, but little seems to have changed.

One likely explanation for this inertia is that the foreign contractors are hired through an international web of subcontractors and subsidiaries, effectively deflecting responsibility from any one company.

A Washington Post article from 2004 outlined the contract chain for a group of Indian support contractors: “[The Indian company] Subhash Vijay had hired them to work for Gulf Catering Co. of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which was subcontracted to Alargan Group of Kuwait City, which was subcontracted to the Event Source of Salt Lake City, which in turn was subcontracted to KBR of Houston.”

Having such a multinational, highly subcontracted workforce further complicates the already difficult task of holding security contractors legally accountable when they commit crimes. Moreover, without knowing who contractors are or how many are out there, it’s hard even for the state to exercise accountability over them—numerous government reports acknowledge the lack of an accurate count of the number of contractors and subcontractors involved in U.S. military operations.

In some cases, PMCs offer governments strategic flexibility at the expense of full political accountability. For instance, the Defense Department and State Department have effectively used foreign contractors to exceed Congress’s limits on the number of troops involved in a military campaign. (In an effort to contain certain military operations, Congress may place a ceiling, or cap, on the number of soldiers that can be deployed on a mission. But caps generally don’t apply to contractors.)

Congress has tried at times to close this loophole by capping the number of contractors as well, but these caps apply only to Americans, not foreigners. This is the case in Colombia, where the use of foreign military contractors allows U.S. companies to deploy more than the 600-person cap imposed by Congress. This official invisibility of foreign, private participants in such military campaigns makes the conflicts seem smaller and more controllable.

A few groups have tried to increase accountability by reinforcing the political relationships between states and their contractor citizens. In the United States, human rights organizations are advocating for Defense Department contractors to be brought under the military chain of command; this will probably come before the U.S. Supreme Court later this year. The UN’s Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries has pushed PMC recruitment countries to enact stricter domestic legislation to control the flow of their citizens to the PMC market abroad. Some countries see legislation as a way to help their governments control potentially violent citizens. For example, South Africa has enacted strict, but arguably ineffective, laws intended to stop Apartheid-era shock troops from selling their services on the international market.

On the other hand, some developing nations see this market as a solution to the problems of insecurity. For countries like Colombia, the international war market provides a way to employ demobilized paramilitaries and retired soldiers. Whether this is an effective way to reintegrate ex-combatants remains to be seen.

What is clear, however, is that governments currently have neither the authority nor the responsibility over private employees that they have for their own citizen-soldiers operating abroad. The triple challenges of a lucrative international market, weak government controls, and lack of political will to control contractors all lead contractors to operate as free agents. The Blackwater armed guard in Iraq has no more ties to his home state than his compatriot who works at a hotel in Jordan. From the perspective of their governments and their fellow citizens, both are simply international labor migrants.

the rub of controlling pmcs

The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano argues that nations do have the tools to hold today’s private soldiers, and those who hire them, accountable. In Private Sector, Public Wars, he argues that “Unlike medieval kings [who used mercenaries], modern nations can use the instruments of good governance to control the role of the private sector in military competition.” Among those instruments he lists “[a]n enabled citizenry with ready access to a vast amount of public information.”

But there’s the rub. Which citizenry is he talking about? Under Weber’s ideal, this was never a question—those who fought, those who ordered them into battle, and those who elected the decision-makers were all citizens of the same country. But with privatization and internationalization, there’s no national constituency that automatically identifies with contractors, or with the wars they fight. This poses its own security risk. Privatization removes war one step away from the country that orders it, and internationalization removes it yet another. When the workers of war become more remote and more invisible, the entry barriers to war are lowered. It’s easier to wage war with anonymous soldiers.

Any serious attempts to regulate PMCs will have to deal with this issue. There are many proposals for making the industry cleaner, such as increasing contractor professionalism and creating greater transparency in bids for government contracts. These steps are important for increasing what political scientist Deborah Avant calls “functional control” of the PMC industry, but they do nothing to increase what she calls “political control.” That will only come through laws that help people feel some sense of ownership over the PMC world. Our ability to re-create that sense of public empowerment in this new world will help determine what military privatization means in the long run. It may make the difference between the state hiring out some of the functions of war, and having a private shadow army.

further reading on the web

Shadow Company

Check out the 2007 award-winning documentary, Shadow Company for an inside look at the world of PMCs through personal experiences from Iraq and interviews with PMC staff, owners, and lobbyists, former mercenaries, academics, journalists, and authors. Check out clips from the film on their website, including segments on Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, and the structure of the industry.

Meet the PMCs

Curious who these companies actually are? The Center for Public Integrity compiled a database of more than 150 PMCs with contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their Windfalls of War project includes information about each company (through 2004), the work they’ve been contracted to do, and the value of their contracts (the database documents up to $48.7 billion in Iraq/Afghanistan contracts). You might also look at info from the industry itself: browse privatemilitary.org or the PMC trade association, International Peace Operations Association.

Human Rights and PMCs

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights further explore the accountability issues raised in the article. These sources discuss the humanitarian and human rights obligations of PMCs and the states that hire them.

Finally, keep an eye on ongoing public commentary on PMCs from The Brookings Institute’s Peter Singer and The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill.

further reading in print

Deborah Avant. The Market for Force (Cambridge University Press, 2005). A political scientist takes on the question of what political and security tradeoffs we can expect with military privatization.

James Jay Carafano. Private Sector, Public Wars: Contractors in Combat—Afghanistan, Iraq, and Future Conflicts (Praeger Security International, 2008). This security analyst believes PMCs are an important military tool that can be adequately controlled by improving the existing system of government contracting.

Jennifer K. Elsea and Nina M. Serafino. “Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues.” Congressional Resource Service Report for Congress, July 11, 2007. This report discusses the role and status of third-country nationals, as well as Americans and Iraqis, in the current Iraq campaign.

P.W. Singer. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell University Press, 2003). The author introduces the wide variety of contexts in which PMCs operate and develops a framework for dividing the industry between security and support functions.

United Nations Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights and Impeding the Exercise of the Rights of People to Self-Determination. Annual Reports. The UN group charged with studying PMCs releases annual reports detailing the labor violations against third-country national contractors and the human rights violations committed by contractors.