Author Conversation: Sofya Aptekar and Cristina Dragomir

Dragomir's Review of Aptekar's Green Card Soldier (2023)

In Green Card Soldier: Between Model Immigrant and Security Threat (2023), Sofya Aptekar delves into the world of immigrant soldiers, exploring their distinct narratives and choices. Often, the military is perceived as composed of citizen soldiers protecting the nation. Yet, Aptekar's book reveals a contrasting reality, shedding light on the lives of nearly 5 percent of new military recruits who are noncitizens. Aptekar examines the motivations of these noncitizen soldiers through interviews with seventy individuals from twenty-three countries, revealing a significant trend: the U.S. military's engagement abroad fuels migration to the U.S., which further provokes precarity of migrants, who in turn might enlist in the American armed forces. This process, Aptekar argues, establishes a vulnerable labor pool, which paradoxically contributes to sustaining American military imperialism.

Divided into seven chapters, the book focuses on the immigrant soldiers’ experiences, illustrating how their enlistment, military work, and identities are shaped by colonial legacies, white supremacy, exploitation, and patriarchy (p.5).

Aptekar's study emphasizes a crucial point: immigrants’ service in the U.S. armed forces does not provide them with the much-desired immunity from deportation. Instead, the military - Aptekar claims - employs the offer of citizenship as a motivation while using deportation as a deterrent, thus shaping the actions of noncitizen soldiers. Green-card soldiers navigate this complex landscape given that they are frequently perceived as both a security concern and as part of a venerated minority. The multifaceted roles they assume often make them vulnerable to discrimination from their native-born peers and superiors, rooted in factors such as race, accents, military branch, and age (p.23). Aptekar weaves their stories, revealing how racial hierarchies and gender dynamics profoundly influence their decision to enlist, their service, and their sense of self.

By amplifying the voices of these immigrants, Green Card Soldier illuminates the intricate mechanisms of the U.S. empire, global militarization, and citizenship. Immigrant recruitment into the U.S. armed forces, though “framed as a benefit to individual immigrants” (p.247), is actually “a technology of labor, used to manage and discipline the military labor force” (p.248). This book underscores the larger implications of immigrant recruitment, depicting a process of immigrant inclusion that legitimizes the American imperial project.

While the book explores the lives of immigrant soldiers, offering vivid portrayals of their stories through brief interview snapshots, a deeper examination of their journeys and incorporation of specific data would have enriched the narrative so as to provide a more comprehensive understanding. Additionally, the portrayal of immigrant soldiers as the victims of an oppressive system tends to sideline their agency and resilience and thus diminish their struggle for rights and freedoms which are also part of their experiences.

Nonetheless, the chapter on the military recruitment program of “non-immigrants” (i.e., foreigners on non-immigrant visas such as tourist, student, etc.) stands out as a commendable addition to the literature, offering insightful glimpses into a program often superficially covered by scholars. This chapter sheds light on the individuals who were recruited through the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program. Analyzing the program's history and its impact on the recruits in the MAVNI program, the chapter hints at the delicate balance those immigrant military workers need to maintain between proving loyalty and facing labor exploitation. Yet, it's crucial to distinguish the recruits in the MAVNI program from other migrant soldiers. Unlike their counterparts, these individuals didn't follow the conventional ‘green-card’ route, bypassing the need for permanent residency to become American citizens in as little as six months. This unique aspect of their enlistment stands in contrast to the broader theme of the book. Enhancing this chapter with more comprehensive data would have amplified its importance in acknowledging the rich tapestry of immigrant experiences.

In summary, however, Green Card Soldier offers an engaging glance into the lives of immigrant soldiers, by sparking a conversation about these individuals, inviting further exploration and understanding of their unique journeys.

Aptekar's Review of Dragomir's Making the Immigrant Soldier (2023)

Thousands of noncitizens enlist in the US military every year. Making the Immigrant Soldier presents the stories of three of these immigrants. Having spent years following their lives – and in one case, poring over social media posts – Dragomir takes an intersectional approach to investigate immigrant experiences in the military. Although small in scale, the study is fitting for an area that has received little attention in migration studies, using deep analysis of life stories to raise questions fruitful for future research. Among these questions are the role of race and gender in shaping how immigrants understand themselves on the spectrum ranging from foreignness to belonging within the military and outside it, as well as what pushes immigrants to enlist in the first place. These are important questions in the context of intense military recruitment among immigrant communities.

The nuanced telling of the stories of Lily, Alexa, and Vikram is quite intriguing. Lily is an Air Force reservist from Romania who joins for economic reasons and is frustrated in her attempts to become an officer. Alexa is an immigrant from South America who makes good money as a nanny but enlists in the Army in hopes of completing college. She experiences downward mobility, her military career cut short by a health crisis. Vikrant, an international student from India looking to stay in the United States enlists in the Army through a now discontinued special program. He embraces his military identity while working to distance himself from being associated with the racialized “terrorist” enemy.

Unlike the three protagonists, who are adult immigrants, non-citizens who enlist in the US military are more likely to have spent their childhood in the United States, recruited along with their citizen peers from high schools in marginalized communities. Lily, Alexa, and Vikram are older and have more education than the average recruit. With only three cases, Dragomir is careful to state that the research is meant to be descriptive and illuminative of the intersectional nature of immigrant naturalization – broadly conceived – through the US military. The detailed attention to conversations, memories, and interactions allows the readers to make their own interpretations.

Some striking themes that emerge across the three cases are how reticent the participants are to even appear critical of the military. This raises questions about the meaning of integrating in the United States through an institution that exerts profound and undemocratic control over its members. Alexa and Vikram bear the brunt of racist jokes, reflecting the default whiteness of the institution. The participants’ desire to become US citizens is not as straightforward as is often assumed about immigrants, let alone immigrants who join the US military. And although all three are partially motivated to enlist by economic factors, economic mobility remains unrealized. Dragomir's longitudinal method allows insight into the evolving embodied performances of identity before and after enlistment, from changes in speech to new religiosity.

The book's analysis is shaped by assimilation theory rather than more critical, recent, and cross-border approaches, although there is some valuable engagement with critical scholarship on racial identity. Left underexplored is the work of the military itself, spread across the globe and implicated in the creation of migrant streams and militarist cultural patterns. Dragomir chides the military for failing to be as accommodating to immigrants, people of color, and women as it claims to be, yet writes uncritically of the participants “dedicat[ing] their lives to the greater good,” (p. 39) and “protecting their host country” (p. 164). Problematizing patriotic platitudes would have helped further unpack the immigrants’ position in the military, beyond the interplay of identity categories. Nevertheless, Making the Immigrant Soldier provides valuable insights for migration studies scholars.

Aptekar's Response to Dragomir's Review of Green Card Soldier (2023)

I write this soon after the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, a U.S. airman whose final words were “Free Palestine”. As we process his righteous act of political protest, there are questions about Bushnell's complicity in imperial violence. In making sense of Bushnell's life, from joining the military to ending his life protesting what it represents, we must hold close to the hope embedded in human agency and capacity for change.

These thoughts lead me to Cristina Dragomir's critique of my “portrayal of immigrant soldiers as the victims of an oppressive system.” In my analysis, I took inspiration from Eve Tuck's call for desire-centered research, focusing on human agency amidst complexity and contradiction – and yes, damage. Yet, even in writing about the group of immigrants most likely to be seen as victims of the system – deported veterans – I complicate the story of victimhood and damage with accounts of these veterans’ strategic use of identities and insistence on return on their own terms.

Rather than a story of victimhood, mine is of complexity of agency amidst powerful systems. I write of immigrants from communities displaced by the US military, who are then recruited into the US military as foot soldiers of empire. In various ways, they become part of the military machinery of violence. As military workers, they suffer, reproduce oppression, and use the military to construct their lives. Both of our books are useful in disrupting facile narratives, yet they are politically distinct. With Green Card Soldier, I tried to show the necessity of rejecting assimilationist narratives and centering the empire in the study of migration.

In the early years of the War on Terror, it was common for US migration scholars to invoke immigrant soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as proof of immigrant deservingness. Thus, we added a “good immigrant” gloss on the hegemonic prerogative to respect the troops, deflecting the critique of what the troops were sent to do in the name of our freedoms. In my book, I write about an immigrant soldier, Camilo Mejía, who became the first to refuse deployment to Iraq. Mejía's life path is complex and contradictory: a beneficiary of empire and its migrant product, a victim and perpetrator. The moral act of refusal and solidarity with the Iraqi people that landed him in military prison underscores the beauty and possibility of human agency and thirst for justice.

Dragomir's Response to Aptekar's Review of Making the Immigrant Soldier (2023)

Thank you for your review and for delving into the life stories of Lily, Vikrant, and Alexa as portrayed in Making the American Soldier. Your feedback warrants a considered response.

I appreciate the suggestion to incorporate more critical, recent, and cross-border approaches into the analysis. However, the critique seems somewhat broad, lacking specific details on the desired approaches. New forms of critical scholarship continually emerge, and without clear specifications, the comment and suggestion become challenging to apply effectively.

As highlighted in the book and explicitly outlined in the introduction, this work doesn't aim to study the military as an institution. Instead, its focus lies in unraveling how the three participants navigate the intricate naturalization process through their military service. While acknowledging the pivotal role of the military, the primary emphasis was on providing a profound understanding of the lives, decision-making processes, and outcomes for the individuals who, though not yet American citizens, choose to enlist and serve their host country. Nevertheless, I acknowledge the importance of addressing the military's role more explicitly, and I am currently working on a different chapter (for an edited volume) that delves into the tensions between political developments, societal requirements, and military decision-making with respect to immigrant soldiers.

Finally, describing the participants’ expressions of loyalty as mere “platitudes” might inadvertently diminish the sincerity inherent in their perspectives. This term undermines the profound commitment they bring to military service. Choosing not to acknowledge or critically engage with their world views would be a disservice, stifling their voices. From the outset, my aim has been to avoid imposing my own beliefs on the participants and instead authentically portray their unique experiences. Anything less than this commitment would be a disservice and a form of injustice.

In essence, these two books offer divergent yet harmonizing perspectives on the intricate journey of enlisting and naturalizing immigrants through U.S. military service. A collective reading provides a panoramic understanding of immigrants’ lives, military policies and visions, shedding light on the overarching role the military, as an institution, plays in shaping American migration policies and practices.