Anne-Lise Dall’Agnola, Harmed Forces. Contemporary French invalides and American disabled veterans: a discrepancy in social recognition?, dissertation defended in 2023 under Dominique Memmi’s advisory.
Abstract:
(Former) military personnel with service-related disabilities are not equally present in the public arena and the media in the United States and in France. While American disabled veterans are very much in the public eye, French invalides seem to be surprisingly absent from the social sphere. Based on extensive field studies carried out in both countries, including interviews with military recruitment personnel (48), spokespersons from veterans’ non-profit organizations (23), invalides (16) and disabled veterans (16), as well as ethnographic observations, archival work, and semiotic analysis of US Army’s and French armée de Terre’s recruiting posters, this research concludes that this discrepancy in public and media presence derives from several factors.
First, it is the result of the unequal ability of the now professional military forces to produce discourses about themselves that will ensure that they continue to receive public support. Second, this discrepancy has material causes. There are indeed fundamental differences when it comes to the social protection systems as well as to the organizations that defend and care for servicemen, invalides, veterans and disabled veterans in both countries. If American disabled veterans are more visible than their French counterparts, it is because this is a condition of their access to the medical care and social support they need. Consequently, the organizations that represent them work actively to publicize their cause. They do so to maintain the social legitimacy of the administrative and social category of "veteran" which grants those who belong to it special social rights. The American organizations also depend on this visibility to secure their income. In France, on the contrary, where social citizenship does not depend on military service, and where organizations are both financially autonomous and part of a tightly-knit combatant community, they cultivate discretion.