Who Becomes a Foreign Fighter? Characteristics of the Islamic State’s Soldiers

Contemporary conflicts are becoming increasingly transnational in nature. In particular, individuals are leaving their homelands to participate in foreign conflicts at an unprecedented rate. This paper analyzes the foreign fighter phenomenon in the context of the Islamic State. Using primary source data on individual ISIS members from the Middle East, this paper contributes to the literature with two key findings. The first affirms previous work on terrorist participants and finds that those who join the Islamic State are more educated and younger than others from the same country. Second, other characteristics that are thought to correlate with joining a terrorist organization, such as prior occupation and marital status, have an inconsistent association and vary by country. Specifically, individuals with a university education and who also hold an unskilled job have the highest likelihood of joining ISIS. Overall, the results suggest that relative deprivation drives participation in foreign fighting.