Survivors, Collaborators, Peacemakers: Transnational Military Wives in Uganda and the Gender Perspectives of Global Security

Abstract

This article explores the lived experiences of transnational military wives who accompanied Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Uganda in the early 2000s. Drawing on feminist ethnographic research with 109 transnational military wives, this article interrogated how the women negotiate identity, violence, exclusion, and care in a context shaped by militarization and precarity. Framed through concepts of liminality and systemic (in)visibility, we examine the role of transnational military wives as survivors, collaborators, and peacemakers. We argue that Uganda’s militarized foreign policy inadvertently created transnational humanitarian and gendered protection crises. The article contributes to debates on gender, global security, and cross-border conflict by foregrounding the complex realities of militarized intimacy and structural abandonment.