Abstract:
While there has been little data gathered as to the presence of migrant workers in service
occupations on U.S. military bases in Iraq, the data that does exist along with anecdotal evidence
gathered by journalists suggests that the division of reproductive labor on military bases reflects
an under-explored axis in the global organization of social reproductive labor. Due in part to the
privatization of these services, the vast majority of outsourced vital support service labor is
performed by men migrating from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nepal and
Pakistan. This globalized division of reproductive labor is a site of symbolic politics reinforcing
the gendered dimensions of the national identity of the American soldier. This division builds off
of a long tradition of gendered dynamics framing military service. The displacement of
reproductive labor, which remains coded as effeminate, onto poor migrant men serves to
reinforce the aggressive masculine version of American soldiering in a way that smoothes over
differences between soldiers along the lines of race, class, rural or urban origin, and even gender.
Echoing earlier colonizer-colonized relations, this division of labor in turn supports the
increasingly imperial posture the United States has assumed in the world.
(Re)Producing American Soldiers in an Age of Empire
“I spent my entire career watching soldiers pulling KP [kitchen police] in the kitchen. Why do
we have to do that with soldiers? Why can’t we outsource that mission? … [W]hat we’re trying
to do is assist the war fighter and get him prepared to go do the mission with a proper attitude in
2
Convention