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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME: HOME, MOBILITY, AND U.S. MILITARY KIDS A Dissertation in Geography by C. M. Livecchi © 2014 C. M. Livecchi Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2014 The Dissertation of C. M. Livecchi was reviewed and approved* by the following: Lorraine Dowler Associate Professor of Geography and Women's Studies Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Melissa W. Wright Professor of Geography and Women's Studies Chris Fowler Assistant Professor of Geography Donald E. Kunze Professor of Architecture and Integrative Arts, Emeritus Jennifer Mittelstadt Associate Professor of History Special Member Cynthia Brewer E. Willard Miller and Ruby S. Miller Professor of Geography Head of the Department of Geography *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii ABSTRACT The United States is a society of deep connections to place. The common question “Where are you from?” is often used as a means of pinning an individual's history to a geographic location. Underlying this question is the assumption that people invest their identities in place – and that place is home. Yet the United States has also long been characterized as the most mobile society in the West. Few Americans are as mobile as active duty military personnel and their families, who engage in long- distance moves an average of once every three years. Youth raised in these circumstances (“military youth”) experience childhoods marked by constant uprooting and resettling. The mobility they know is thoroughly militarized and is rationalized by the state as an unavoidable consequence of the need for national security and readiness. This state-sanctioned mobility sets them apart from other highly mobile groups such as transnational migrants, refugees, homeless youth, and Travelers. This dissertation examines the experiences of military youth with regard to home, mobility, identity, and militarization. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 43 youth (ages 18 to 25) from active duty military families, survey data, mapping exercises, and primary documents, I analyze the ways that military youth construct home in light of their mobility, the strategies they use to settle into new places, and the ways that mobility and militarization impact their identities and prompt new formulations of place and home in the process. Their experiences reveal tensions between mobility and rootedness in American society, and suggest that militarization is a deep, fundamental force in their everyday lives. iii CONTENTS Abbreviations................................................................................................................................viii Maps................................................................................................................................................ix Tables............................................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... xi Chapter I. A Maze of Cardboard Boxes......................................................................................... 1 Youth..........................................................................................................................................3 A Unique Context...................................................................................................................... 5 Military Youth............................................................................................................................9 Challenges................................................................................................................................11 Structure...................................................................................................................................12 Chapter II. An Empire of Bases................................................................................................... 14 American Empire.....................................................................................................................14 Globalization, American hegemony, and the U.S. military...............................................15 Overseas base siting, national security, and readiness.......................................................16 Resisting empire.................................................................................................................19 On the Home Front.................................................................................................................. 21 Base realignment and closure............................................................................................ 21 Opposition to BRAC..........................................................................................................23 “Mega-military communities”........................................................................................... 24 Living the Uncanny Base.........................................................................................................25 The spatial question mark.................................................................................................. 26 Everyplace, noplace, American space................................................................................27 Discussion................................................................................................................................28 Chapter III. Home and Mobility.................................................................................................. 31 Home........................................................................................................................................31 Multiple disciplines, slippery definitions...........................................................................31 Humanist roots...................................................................................................................33 Environmental psychology and place identity...................................................................34 Critical approaches.............................................................................................................36 Summary............................................................................................................................38 Mobility....................................................................................................................................40 iv The most mobile society in the world?..............................................................................40 Theorizing mobility: The new mobilities paradigm.......................................................... 41 Mobile subjects.................................................................................................................. 43 Summary............................................................................................................................44 Setting the Stage...................................................................................................................... 46 Chapter IV. Militarization and Scale............................................................................................48 Militarization............................................................................................................................48 The reach of militarization.................................................................................................49 Civil-military relations.......................................................................................................50 Intimate militarization........................................................................................................52 Summary............................................................................................................................54 Scale.........................................................................................................................................55 Theorizing and understanding scale...................................................................................55 Feminist geopolitical approaches to scale..........................................................................58 Intimately global................................................................................................................ 59 People, places, security, and scale..................................................................................... 61 Summary............................................................................................................................63 Interweaving and Rescaling.....................................................................................................64 Chapter V. Methods and Methodology.........................................................................................65 Methods....................................................................................................................................65 A qualitative framework.................................................................................................... 65 Shared experiences and difference: Multiple methods.....................................................