Third-country nationals form a lower tier of segregated base labor from the poorest countries

Evidence

On many bases, an even lower class of segregated housing exists for people termed “third country nationals.” These are the citizens of countries other than United States and the host nation of the base, who frequently cook, clean, and keep the physical infrastructure of bases running every day. Most often, they are Filipinos. At Gitmo, the Filipinos live in dormitories that usually have four bunk beds to a room; Jamaicans have slightly better housing, formerly occupied by U.S. troops. At bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, many of the contractors have been from Nepal, Bangladesh, and as far away as Fiji. The journalist Sarah Stillman described them as “the Pentagon’s invisible army: more than seventy thousand cooks, cleaners, construction workers, fast-food clerks, electricians, and beauticians from the world’s poorest countries who service U.S. military logistics … Filipinos launder soldiers’ uniforms, Kenyans truck frozen steaks and inflatable tents, Bosnians repair electrical grids, and Indians provide iced mocha lattes.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 438

Categorization

• XREF: Connect the ‘Pentagon’s invisible army’ of third-country nationals to the earlier book material (from other chapters) on base labor outsourcing and to broader literature on military logistics contracting.
• SEED: Angles for an article: the structural position of Filipino and other TCN workers on U.S. bases as a category unseen in most base debates, and the housing hierarchy of segregated base labor.