Guest Editors' Foreword

The recruitment and retention of well-qualified military personnel are central concerns in any armed force. In this regard, both quantity and quality play an equally important role. A military that meets its end-strength goals yet has poorly-trained and unmotivated soldiers can hardly fulfil its mission any better than an understaffed military whose personnel is of superior quality (Szvircsev Tresch, 2005). Particularly since most armed forces in Europe shifted from a conscript-based to an all-volunteer format, special attention has been paid to the topic of recruitment in military sociology. At a working group conference held on July 12-13, 2016 in Zurich, the ERGOMAS Working Group (WG) on Recruitment & Retention, under the direction of Tibor Szvircsev Tresch, focused on minorities and persons of immigrant backgrounds in order to discuss military sociology’s latest research findings and insights. On this occasion, the WG attempted to provide answers to questions such as : how successful is the recruitment of new professional military personnel in contemporary armed forces ? How to satisfactorily include personnel of immigrant and minority backgrounds ? How can military personnel retention be improved ?