Refusing Reform, Reworking Pity, or Reinforcing Privilege? The Multivalent Politics of Young People’s Fun and Friendship within a Volunteering Encounter

Abstract

This paper analyses initiatives which took British young people from ethnic minority and disenfranchised backgrounds to volunteer in sub‐Saharan Africa. It asks whether decolonial possibilities can be seen in the politics of youthful fun and friendship amid a practice undeniably driven by interpenetrating neocolonial logics, where enrolment in helping “needy” others is seen as a means to “improve” working‐class and racially marked youth. The paper argues that volunteers’ investments in leisure constituted a politics of refusal towards how they were acted upon as objects of concern. More ambivalently, playful, friendly interactions between British and African youth disrupted relations of charitable pity and signalled desires for solidarity and equality, but cannot be claimed as fully decolonial. At times, fun also re‐entrenched neocolonial and other oppressive relations. Overall, the paper demonstrates that a close reading of the multivalent, affective politics of young people’s fun and friendship can reveal much about the reproduction or subversion of contemporary neocolonial logics that operate both within and beyond the borders of postcolonial Britain.

‘Giving back’ through mobility trajectories: motivations for engaging in development encounters in Ghana among transnational youth

“…This and other accounts of young people’s experiences of giving back throughout their mobility trajectories, show that there was often a mismatch between their expectations and reality, both positive as well as negative. This shows the often-overlooked contradictory emotional processes that are at work during moments of giving back, which were often seen as providing the ‘catalyst’ for transformation (Cheung Judge 2020 ) and provide more realistic insights into the phenomenon. Rather than fixed, young people’s sense of motivation thus sometimes fluctuated, in varying degrees, in response to development encounters.…”

“…Much previous research considers motivations retrospectively, through interviews, or considers them to be perennial facts of the lifestyles of those living abroad (Page and Mercer 2012). In contrast, recent literature on international volunteering and humanitarianism more generally has emphasised the shifting emotionality of 'development work ' (Cheung Judge 2020;Fechter 2019). Along these lines, Kleist (2020) draws on the concept of 'affective circuits' to address the social repercussions of transnational recycling for hometown development.…”

“…Realising the valuable contribution he could make to the country’s development significantly shaped Joshua’s sense of motivation. For marginalised youth, such trips can thus imply the temporary suspension of the classed and racialized boundaries that mark their position in the country of residence (Cheung Judge 2020 ). Several other participants on the other hand, regretted their inability to give back to Ghana as members of the diaspora.…”

“…Being immersed in the giving back activity through face-to-face interactions with beneficiaries were cited by many as crucial for surpassing distinctions between ‘those in need of help’ and themselves as ‘privileged visitors’. While acknowledging structural power imbalances, such affective moments thus often seemed to disrupt a ‘helping’ hierarchy (Cheung Judge 2020 ). For example, while Angelina visibly performed separate tasks as the ‘helper’ throughout one of the first activities of her project in Ghana, a football tournament for residents of ‘poor’ villagers, she actively participated in her next event, a visit to a centre for street children.…”

“…Second, however, similar dynamics were at play as in the predominant academic analysis of ‘North-South’ volunteering accounts. These have been criticised for reinforcing neo-colonial relations and producing ‘otherness’ (Cheung Judge 2020 ).…”