Danish Veteran Challenges and Support Structures: An Overview to Enable Transnational Analysis

Abstract

This article explores the challenges of Danish veterans and the support structures and policies in place to address these challenges. We describe Denmark's active foreign policy since 1992 and the launch of a formal veteran policy in 2010, which resulted in the establishment of the Danish Veteran Centre in 2011. We also summarise and review the veteran research conducted by VIVE and the Danish Veteran Centre, which sheds light on the challenges faced by Danish Army veterans who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq from 1992 to 2022, and we argue that transnational perspectives provide an important contribution in arriving at a differentiated illustration of veteran challenges, which consequently enables veteran support to effectively address veteran needs. We criticize the dominant position of positivistic paradigms and clinical concepts in Danish veteran research, which tend to individualize and pathologize veteran challenges and propose increased attention toward interdisciplinary research and triangulation. Additionally, we highlight that enlisted personnel is particularly vulnerable in a number of areas. To effectively address the challenges faced by Danish veterans and provide adequate support, we need more research that engages in an interdisciplinary dialogue about veteran challenges and considers the social contexts in which these challenges arise.