Relational legacies impacting on veteran transition from military to civilian life: trajectories of acquisition, loss and re-formulation of a sense of belonging

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

Panama: owning the canal

It is rare that Americans wonder about what happened to the Panama Canal after the United States turned it over to Panama in 1999. Since 2000, the Panamanians have been able to transform the canal into a profitable enterprise and successfully revert a good deal of Canal Zone infrastructure to public use through a combination of positive political decision-making, fiscally beneficial economic policies, and constructive management. The United States created the nation of Panama, built and managed the canal, and finally begrudgingly handed over sovereignty. To this extent, Panama's success is our success. Yet there has been surprising little real analysis of the changes in Panama that have resulted from a decade of ownership of the canal and the land surrounding it. It is time to appraise the results so far.http://archive.org/details/panamaowningcana1094541395Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited