Abstract
Since its inception, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) has been controversial. For some, the program teaches discipline and national pride. For others, it militarizes schools and targets low-income, often non-white students, for military service. In her new book, Citizen, Student, Soldier: Latina/o Youth, JROTC, and the American Dream, anthropologist Gina Pérez argues that these polarized positions often whitewash or trivialize the motivations and experiences of JROTC participants, especially those from non-dominant ethnoracial populations. In pursuit of greater understanding, Pérez conducted a multiyear ethnography of a JROTC program.
Citizen, Student, Soldier focuses on questions of citizenship, broadly conceptualized. It explores the desires and aspirations that attract marginalized students to JROTC and tracks how the program—and students’ active engagement with it—shapes their sense of self, community, and belonging. Pérez approaches these issues through an intersectional lens attentive to the interplay between structure and agency. The result is a captivating account of JROTC, as lived and imagined by those within its ranks.
Pérez’s fieldwork centers on “Fairview,” a high school in south Lorain, Ohio that boasts strong support and enthusiasm for JROTC. This support is vividly illustrated in the book’s opening vignette of a Veterans’ Day assembly. With a seasoned ethnographic eye, Pérez takes the reader into JROTC classrooms and performances. In these spaces, we meet nervous freshmen cadets and confident seniors as they learn, rehearse, and compete. Diverse in their ambitions and personal histories, these students reflect the ethnoracialdemographics of the school and the surrounding community. The majority are Puerto Rican and Latino. Notably, Latinas predominate among its members. Although the students are the main characters, the story has a full supporting cast—most importantly, the program’s beloved instructors.
The book situates Fairview’s JROTC within a broader historical, political, and economic horizon, marked by deep race, class, and gender inequities. Lorain, a small deindustrialized city in the rust belt, suffers from high rates of unemployment and poverty, particularly among its Puerto Rican population. Educational attainment similarly shows significant disparities across ethnoracial groups and socioeconomic status. Pérez is attentive to national, even global, economic dislocations and anti-Latinx rhetoric, which positions these youth as a threat. It is within this wider context, full of contradictions and ironies, that JROTC has expanded over the past three decades as a neoliberal solution to “at-risk youth.”
But Pérez insists that students are not passive reactors to these structural realities. Rather, they are astute, pragmatic navigators of a socioeconomically constrained and ethnoracially stratified reality. Some cadets aspire to join the military. For some families, military service is a tradition. Even among students with relatives in the armed services, many have no desire to enlist after graduation. Most seem intent on attending college or finding more immediate means to support themselves and their families. For participants, JROTC has both material and symbolic benefits. On the material side, JROTC gives students new skills, opens up job opportunities, and expands their social capital. On the symbolic side, the program, as they describe it, increases their self-esteem and social standing. One clear example of this is the JROTC uniform. Even though non-JROTC students sometimes called cadets the “pickle patrol,” members relished the newfound respect the uniform afforded them, both among their classmates and adults. Similarly, the program provided young women with ways to increase their autonomy and develop their leadership. To be sure, there are serious constraints and challenges, but Pérez concludes that the JROTC offered participants “one of the few and effective resources” to “demonstrate they are good, positive leaders among their peers, and worthy of dignity” (p. 148).
Through drill routines, public speaking, and community service, JROTC participants use the program to reimagine themselves and to recalibrate their social relationships and social status. In this, they enact and claim forms of citizenship that transcend the narrow legal definitions and the stated aims of the program. For Pérez, what is at stake is their belonging and inclusion in U.S. society. In articulating narratives of transformation, participants did not simply regurgitate vaguely patriotic notions of citizenship. Instead, they infused the concept with existentially grounded aspirations for their community’s empowerment.
Beyond these substantive concerns and findings, the book also offers important lessons on research ethics, especially for studies of politically controversial phenomena. When Pérez began her research, some parents expressed concern. One, in particular, questioned her motives. “Are you here to prove what you think you already know about this program? Or are you really here to learn?” (p. 14). To a certain extent, the book is an extended reply. Admirably, Pérez manages to listen and observe, empathetically and critically. Although Pérez holds strong reservations about JROTC—and thoughtfully articulates them—the book does not take a judgmental tone. It does not reduce students to puppets of propaganda nor downplay the tangible benefits of participation for students with limited options.
Of equal importance, at least for this reader, Pérez does not shy away from the problems of the program, as an institution and ideological project. She is particularly scathing in her critique of predatory military recruiters. Pérez argues that, while the program at Fairview (and presumably programs elsewhere) provides valuable opportunities and resources for non-white or non-elite students, there are other non-militaristic ways to provide such support. These are precisely the alternatives that should receive investment. Moreover, she rejects the neoliberal and bellicose underpinnings of the program and worries about its continued expansion. In this manner, Pérez represents a highly contentious and ethically complicated topic with humility and integrity—qualities we would all benefit from emulating. For this alone, Citizen, Student, Soldier is highly recommended.