Rethinking Volunteering and Cosmopolitanism: Beyond Individual Mobilities and Personal Transformations

Abstract

In this paper we use assemblage thinking to offer a new interrogation of the relationalities of volunteering and development and to revisit volunteering's relationship to cosmopolitanism. Recent debates about the rise of new actors in development cooperation have seen a growing interest in the geopolitical significance of volunteers and their contribution to development. Research has addressed the ways international volunteering can shape cosmopolitan subjectivities, whilst claims for volunteering's universality are a key feature of global development policy. However, we argue that existing approaches to volunteering, cosmopolitanism and development remain contained by established development imaginaries and their ascription of agency, authority and expertise to actors from the global North. We use the idea of the assemblage, and data from two research projects, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent's (IFRC) Global Review on Volunteering, and a doctoral research project on diaspora volunteering, to explore the constitution of what volunteering is within and between places. Through this, we identify alternative sites for interrogating the capacity of volunteering to challenge established ideas of agency, care and responsibility in development.

Volunteering: Connecting the Global Agenda on Sustainability to the Community Level

“…Traditional dichotomies are increasingly challenged to acknowledge overlapping identities of 'giver' and 'receiver' and understand how local actors can be both victims and volunteers in changing contexts (Thomas et al 2018b, p. 2;Baillie Smith et al 2019). However, a romanticised perspective over local volunteering risks failing to consider "countervailing influences of powerful interests, local elites, social differences and prejudices related to gender, class, caste and ethnic differences within communities, which can block inclusive action" (UNV 2018a, p. 46).…”

Affective life, “vulnerable” youths, and international volunteering in a residential care programme in Cusco, Peru

“…First, we show the importance of affect theory for articulating situated struggles for well-being and "development" of vulnerable groups involved with international volunteering. Second, we provide an account of self-and shared "transformation" experienced by marginalised young people, which illustrates the limits of existing "North-South imaginaries" and individual volunteer-centric readings related to self-and social transformation (Laurie & Baillie Smith, 2018, p. 95; see also Baillie Smith et al, 2019).…”

For an analytics of affective life: marginalized youths, social interventions and development affectspheres in Cusco, Peru

“…First, we show the importance of affect theory for articulating situated struggles for well-being and "development" of vulnerable groups involved with international volunteering. Second, we provide an account of self-and shared "transformation" experienced by marginalized young people, which illustrates the limits of existing "North-South imaginaries" and individual volunteer-centric readings related to self-and social transformation (Laurie and Baillie Smith, 2018: 95; see also Baillie Smith et al, 2019).…”

“…North-led development sector "mobilise[s] and legitimate[s] particular knowledges, actors and authorities" transnationally (BaillieSmith and Jenkins, 2017: 953; see alsoBaillie Smith et al, 2019;Laurie and Baillie Smith, 2018). These works have chosen to highlight cases of global South-based development NGO activists, diaspora and South-South volunteering in order to "develop new ideas and practices of development, care and solidarity that escape the historical ascription of agency and authority to particular places and subjectivities" (BaillieSmith et al, 2019: 19).…”