The use of military reservists’ civilian skills in the UK armed forces

This chapter considers reservists as transmigrants moving between civilian employment and their military roles, focusing on skills transfers to military contexts. The chapter examines the continued validity of the idea that this transfer occurs and has utility for armed forces, using the example of the UK Reserves and the reforms initiated under the Future Reserves 2020 (FR20) program. The chapter considers how skills transfer was envisaged under FR20 and the Whole Force Approach and then considers empirical evidence for skills transfer into the armed forces by reservists in terms of specialist, accredited, and transferable or ‘soft’ skills, drawing insights from reservists themselves and from a close reading of defense policy documentation and discourse. The chapter then considers how civilian-to-military skills transfers are framed and limited by employment practices, labor market transformations and wider public sector expenditure restrictions, which in turn have been shaped by modes of neoliberal economic governance.