The Military Gateway to a New Life: Stories of Immigrant Soldiers in the Five Eyes

Many countries rely on immigration to sustain their population growth and workforce.  Canada and some of its allies are no exception, having very high rates of foreign-born among their population. On the other hand, immigrants leave their homes in search of a better life, to reunite with family, for economic or humanitarian reasons, and they bring to their new country much needed human capital to fill workforce gaps, including serving in their new country’s military. Due to the limited research on immigrants in the armed forces, we embarked on a qualitative study to explore different immigration and military service experiences, using narrative inquiry to elicit the stories of immigrant soldiers, aviators and sailors serving in the militaries of the Five Eyes countries: Canada, the US, Australia, the UK and New Zealand.

 

Project Authors:

Grazia Scoppio, PhD

• Affiliation: Royal Military College of Canada & Queen’s University
• Tel: (613) 876-4001   Email: scoppio-g@rmc.ca

Aimee Vieira, PhD

Sawyer Hogenkamp PhD Candidate

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Biographies:

Dr. Grazia Scoppio is a Professor in the Department of Defence Studies, Royal Military College of Canada (RMC), cross-appointed in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University and Fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy (CIDP) at Queen’s. She held several appointments including Acting Deputy Director Research, Dallaire Centre of Excellence for Peace and Security; Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Peace and War Studies at Norwich University, Vermont, USA; and Dean of Continuing Studies at RMC. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Canadian Military Journal and the Comparative and International Education journal (CIE) and was the Editor (French) with Dr. Marianne Larsen, Editor (English) of the CIE journal. Her multidisciplinary research focuses on military personnel issues including: diversity and gender in military organizations; immigrants in the armed forces; indigenous people in the military; and military education. She presented her research at many national and international conferences and authored or co-authored several publications, including the book The Power of Diversity in the Armed Forces – International Perspectives on Immigrant Participation in the Military, co-edited by Scoppio and Greco. She received grants and awards from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Department of National Defence, and Fulbright.

Dr. Aimee Vieira is a Professor of Sociology recently retired from Norwich University in Vermont, USA. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Université de Montréal, in Quebec, Canada. Dr. Vieira has extensive experience conducting qualitative interviews with minority populations, rural residents, immigrants, adult “Third Culture Kids”, entrepreneurs, and military service members. She served as Director of the School of Justice Studies and Sociology at Norwich from 2018 through 2020, and as Deputy Director and Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Language at the Norwich University Applied Research Institute from 2013-2016. She has collaborated with the Places Institute at SUNY-Oneonta and has served on the Diversity Committee of the Rural Sociological Society and is a past chair of the Racial and Ethnic Minorities Research Interest Group of the same organization. Her publications include research on the use of interpreters in conflict zones, language dimensions of cross-cultural engagements, and minority community rural economies. She also co-authored a US government funded cross-cultural training course for US Army soldiers at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School.         

Sawyer Hogenkamp is a Ph.D. Student in Social Welfare, at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He completed a Master of Education (M.Ed.) in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University and holds a M.Ed. and B.Ed. from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Sawyer is pursuing a Ph.D. to further the study of violence and safety in school and community contexts, particularly in under-supervised spatial contexts, and among underserved populations of youth and school staff. Sawyer was a research assistant in the study of the Regular Officer Training Plan using Gender-Based Analysis Plus, examining the experiences of officer cadets in Canadian Military Colleges through an intersectional lens, with the aim to better support women and ethnic minorities in officer training programs. In addition to this project, Sawyer is working with the APA Taskforce on Violence Against Educators, organizing and analyzing data from school psychologists, social workers, counselors, administrators, teachers, and other school staff regarding their perceptions and experiences of violence and safety in their workplace.