Altruistic Exploitation: Orphan Tourism and Global Social Work

Abstract

Despite the abundant scientific evidence demonstrating the benefits of family-based care for children and the damages brought on by institution-based care, the social work profession continues to endorse and engage in practices that promote the latter. This is particularly true through orphan tourism and orphan volunteerismshort-and longer-term forms of providing aid to residential facilities caring for children. Using educational tours to orphanages, fundraising and service projects, and academic internships based in such facilities, the profession contributes to the perpetuation of institution-based care and forms of exploitation. Based on an exhaustive review of the global literature and utilising an innovative theoretical framework of 'altruistic exploitation', the authors explore the ironic juxtaposition of benefits and harms associated with orphan tourism to the various stakeholders. Volunteers are often exploited in fulfilling their altruistic motives while at the same time engaging in potential exploitation of the very children they aim to serve. Authors further examine social work implications in the policy, practice and research arenas, and provide examples and recommendations in preventing family separation, promoting family-based alternative care and empowering communities.

Comparing reunified and residential care facility children's wellbeing in Ghana: The role of hope

“…The study also emphasized the importance of maintaining the changes over long term, in their case for four years, to produce sustainable change. The use of short and medium term volunteers should be avoided, to minimize the repeated experience of disrupted attachments (Smith Rotabi, Roby, & Bunkers, 2016). Staff discontinuance should be handled with sensitivity to manage the personal loss to children.…”

Host-children of tourism destinations: systematic quantitative literature review

“…As a result of the growing popularity of voluntourism (Proyrungroj, 2017), it has received increasing scholarly attention. Past studies have investigated volunteer tourists' experiences and motivations (e.g., Carpenter, 2015;Freidus, 2017;Proyrungroj, 2017;Rotabi, Roby, & McCreery Bunkers, 2016;Tomazos & Butler, 2012); cultural confrontation between tourists and host-children (e.g., Klaver, 2015); commodification of host-children (e.g., Guiney, 2018;Reas, 2015); the channel of voluntourism and tourists' perception of the impacts of voluntourism (e.g., Rogerson & Slater, 2014); political activities such as anti-orphanage tourism campaigns (e.g., Guiney & Mostafanezhad, 2015); and improvement of voluntourism with regards to the risks facing both tourists and children (e.g., Wilson, 2015). Most studies exploring voluntourism come mainly from tourists' and political perspectives; no study has investigated voluntourism from children's perspectives.…”

Community‐Engaged Scholarship, Knowledge, and Dominant Discourse: A Cautionary Tale From the Global Development Sector

“…That is, well‐intentioned outsiders choose to spend funds on volunteering programs. Those funds, relatively large in contrast with per‐capita incomes in many marginalized communities, distort the political economy of communities served, creating incentives for more children to be placed in orphanages, often through deceitfulness (Hartman, ; Punaks & Feit, ; Rotabi, Roby, & Bunkers, ). Even children with parents are placed in orphanages, which are demonstrably worse for child development than known alternatives, including foster care, and they are sometimes trafficked into orphanages (van Doore, ).…”