The changing nature of volunteering and the cross-border mobility: where does learning come from?

Young People Engaging in Volunteering: Questioning a Generational Trend in an Individualized Society

“…These findings are in tune with other studies on youth volunteering which claim that young people are likely to volunteer mainly for their own personal interest, expecting to gain work experience and skills that may be useful for their curriculum and future career [17,22,31,[37][38][39][40]. Such motives can be also a response to the rhetoric of the lifelong learning paradigm that emphasizes the importance for citizens to continuously update and enhance their skills, in order to quickly respond and adjust to fast changing labour market.…”

“…On the contrary, volunteering is valued because it is a recreational way to go abroad, travel, and get to know a country and other cultures without major expenses. These findings echo previous studies [31,57], which affirm that mobility and time-off from other commitments seem to be powerful motivators.…”

“…This disposition reflects an intergenerational trend toward a more reflexive and individualised form of volunteering characterised by self-interest rather than altruism. As the recent literature suggests, nowadays the willingness to volunteer seems to increasingly depend on personal interests and needs rather than on traditional values such as service to others and a sense of civic duty to the community [16,19,20,29,31]. The young volunteers of this study decided to get involved in this voluntary experience mainly to escape unemployment and precariousness, since some of them were unemployed and others were doing precarious works.…”

“…Corroborating this perspective, several studies report instrumental motivations to join a volunteer experience; that is, volunteers are not necessarily altruistic and are rarely willing to offer their services for no personal gain [27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. For instance, Bocsi and other researchers [33] argue that while the traditional motivations of volunteering are based on altruistic values and on the importance of helping the community, nowadays volunteers are prompted by multiple "modern" motivations.…”

“…This is contradicted by other findings which suggest that instead of altruism, young people are mainly motivated by personal and professional reasons. According to this perspective, young people are more likely to get involved in volunteering in order to gain new skills that may lead them to new or better employment opportunities [17,22,31,[37][38][39][40]. For instance, Handy and other colleagues [37] argue that in the United States and Canada, where volunteering represents a strong positive signal for employers, younger generations, especially the career-oriented volunteers, are more inclined to volunteer.…”