PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Drawing from life history accounts of 30 former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), this study analyses spatiotemporal variation in recruitment patterns. It demonstrates how shifts in the compositions of territorial control result in and intersect with changes in the recruitment strategies employed by the LTTE and the levels and forms of indiscriminate violence that respondents were exposed to. The results generate three space and time-specific recruitment trajectories that my interviewees followed to join the LTTE: political resentment, personal victimization, and military socialization. Paying attention to spatiotemporal shifts in recruitment patterns is imperative to better capture the differing recruitment logics operating at different stages of an armed conflict, as well as to improve scholarly understanding of why and how armed groups change their recruitment tactics.