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The security situation in Europe has led to a national focus in the armed forces. A national defence requires a sufficient number of soldiers and to handle this, several countries relies on voluntary soldiers. In Sweden, the Home Guard represent 47% of the total number of soldiers in the armed forces. At first look, a professional unit should have easier to motivate soldiers compared to the Home Guard. However, the fulfilment in the Home Guard is nearly 100% and the professional units have had problems keeping their soldiers. The purpose with this paper is therefore to investigate what motivates Home Guard soldiers to serve. The method used is a case study based on several interviews with soldiers from the Swedish Home Guard. The case study uses Fabrizio Battistellis theory about motivation as a theoretical foundation, which consists of three different categories, paleomodern, modern and postmodern.

This study indicates that soldiers in the Home Guard are motivated by paleomodern factors, as factors such as duty, responsibility and the desire to be part of a military culture are important to soldiers. Findings also indicates that postmodern factors such as the will to develop the soldier’s personal identities and a longing for adventure were found to be important for the soldiers. However, although these factors are common, they are not thought to be crucial. Modern factors are weakly represented since no significant economic or materialistic factors could be determined.