Coming Home a "Veteran": The military-civilian transition in Canada and Canadian military identity
Date
2021-11-19
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Abstract
The military-civilian transition (MCT), despite having no concrete definition, is understood as the transition between a military member’s career and their reintegration into the civilian world. Canada’s defence strategy, “Strong, Secured, Engaged”, considers the MCT to fall within its strategic framework. There are gaps in what we know about the MCT in Canada, especially as MCT policies continue evolving. The purpose of this research is to understand the experiences of nine former members of Canadian Armed Forces based on the information obtained through semi-structured interviews about their releases, which took place between 2012 and 2016, and self-report questionnaires. The focus of this research is on negotiation of identity following military service by using a social psychological approach and identity theories. The main themes that emerged from this research are: (1) Training and indoctrination, (2) Making meaning from military service, (3) Uniforms and identity, and (4) Storytelling and identity. This thesis argues that: (1) current MCT frameworks fail to account for the civilian-military transition, which is the first transition that members experience throughout their military careers, while seeking to address the MCT; (2) the construction of the “veteran” reveals tensions between military culture and Canadian values and highlights tensions in post-military identity formation; and (3) understanding operational culture and military training is key to understanding how members adapt to the civilian world and when they engage in identity negotiation throughout and after their careers.
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Military identity, Military-civilian transition, Canadian Armed Forces, Veteran, Military culture, Canada
Citation
Tremblay, M. (2021). Coming Home a “Veteran”: The military-civilian transition in Canada and Canadian military identity (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.