Veteran Reintegration and Social Inclusion: Cross-Sectoral Interaction in Comparative International Perspective

Veteran Reintegration and Social Inclusion:
Cross-Sectoral Interaction in Comparative International Perspective


Telitsyna A.Yu.

Cand. Sci. (Biol.), Senior Research Fellow, Center for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector; Assoc. Prof., School of Politics and Governance, Faculty of Social Sciences, HSE University, Moscow, Russia atelitsyna@hse.ru

ID of the Article: 11151


The study was implemented in the framework of the Basic Research Program at HSE University (HSE-BR-2025-049).


For citation:

Telitsyna A.Yu. Veteran Reintegration and Social Inclusion: Cross-Sectoral Interaction in Comparative International Perspective. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2026. No 10. P. 123-134



Abstract

The article conceptualizes veteran reintegration as a multidimensional social process – institutional, socio-adaptive, network, and symbolic – encompassing legal guarantees, psychological and labor-market adaptation, the restoration of social ties, and public recognition. The term “veterans” is used in the broad sense adopted in international research and regulatory practice: besides combatants in the narrow sense, it covers former service members with experience of other high-risk forms of service entailing subsequent social reintegration. A comparative analysis of twelve countries - Israel, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, South Korea, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Australia, and Finland – shows that reintegration models differ chiefly in the configuration of interaction among the state, the nonprofit sector, local communities, and veterans’ associations, rather than in the scope of state guarantees as such. On this basis, the article proposes a typology of seven reintegration models built on the combination of actor configuration and the functional emphasis of support. The article also examines parallels with the Russian experience – the reintegration of Afghan and Chechen war veterans, and the current situation associated with the large-scale emergence of veterans of the special military operation.


Keywords
veterans; reintegration; civil society; nonprofit sector; social policy; social inclusion; local communities; cross-sectoral interaction

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