Paper short abstract:

It is said that for every year of armed conflict, a decade is needed to clean up the resultant military waste. What happens when people lacking other economic opportunities begin to see landmine contamination -- and the de-mining jobs it brings -- as a source of stability?

Paper long abstract:

Since the start of the War in Donbas (2014-present), eastern Ukraine has become one of the most landmine-contaminated parts of the world. Although the conflict remains unresolved, military waste (Henig 2012; Zani 2019) clean-up has begun under the leadership of humanitarian de-mining organizations and with the cooperation of the Ukrainian military.

For some eastern Ukrainians, humanitarian de-mining jobs, which promise good salaries, opportunities for advancement, state pensions, and a (supposedly) politically neutral career path, are not only worth the risks, but extremely desirable. This is particularly the case in war-affected communities where economic opportunity was limited even before the violence began. There, the presence of military waste -- and the enormous length of time required to remove it -- seems to promise stable employment not seen since Soviet times.

Or does it? This paper draws on research in a landmine-affected rural community in far eastern Ukraine, where locals, displaced people, military personnel, border guard, and humanitarian de-mining organizations approached de-mining projects from varying scales and with different social commitments and temporal horizons in mind. Focusing on three points of contestation in de-mining project planning and execution -- the employment of female de-miners; the after-hours ban on alcohol consumption; and the detonation (and therefore, destruction) of the mines themselves -- I ask: how does the navigation of multiple and porous social orders (Gershon 2019) both craft and challenge the project form? What consequences and complications arise from anticipating projects without ends?