Uneven geographies of youth volunteering in Uganda: Multi-scalar discourses and practices

Smith, Matt Baillie; Mills, Sarah; Okech, Moses; Fadel, Bianca

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.05.006

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 34 publications

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“…This section details some of the main ways in which young people make a living in the Karamoja and Busoga subregions of Uganda. Through our survey and interviews, we identified a wide variety of livelihood activities in which young people are engaged, including juggling paid work (including self-employment/entrepreneurship and employment/working for someone else) with education, volunteering and unpaid tasks (including domestic and care work) (Namuggala 2017;Baillie Smith et al 2022;Shankland et al 2022). Before we look in more detail at how these various roles overlap and intersect in individuals' lives, this section outlines the labour market possibilities that young people have (Table 2).…”

Section: Portfolio Livelihoodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young people ‘making it work’ in a changing climate

Barford,

Magimbi,

Mugeere

et al. 2023

JBA

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Globally, young people face weak labour market demand and have been particularly susceptible to recent livelihood stresses and shocks linked to climate change. In this article, we consider what happens when young people face intersecting challenges including climate change. While much of the literature focuses on barriers to work and how to break these, we consider young people�s struggles and successes in securing and maintaining work. The focus is on Uganda, demographically one of the world�s youngest countries and home to a largely �underemployed� cohort of young people. Our findings identify some of the many ways in which climate change disrupts young people�s livelihoods. Young people are already proactively responding to climate change. This points to the need for other actors to learn from young people�s existing endeavours, to build in more support and opportunities, manage risk and insecurity, and construct a more climate change-resilient infrastructure.

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Section: Portfolio Livelihoodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young people ‘making it work’ in a changing climate

Barford,

Magimbi,

Mugeere

et al. 2023

JBA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Assessing the ‘Why’ in Volunteering for Refugees: Exploring Volunteer Motivations

2023

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This article addresses what motivations volunteers have for volunteering for refugees and whether these motivations differ from or complement motivations to volunteer in general, such as included in the widely used measurement instrument, the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI). We organized eight focus groups with volunteers for refugees (N = 44) and interviewed five involved coordinators, all working in one city in the Netherlands. Results show that humanitarian concerns and social justice were highly relevant for people’s motivations, next to volunteering to obtain or improve knowledge and skills. We find support for the earlier suggested extension of the VFI with the social justice motivation. Next, the current study expands existing analysis on volunteer motivations by identifying four areas that require further attention: (1) volunteers for refugees seek a meaningful role in life; (2) are motivated by the pragmatism of this volunteer work; (3) have emotional reasons; and (4) are motivated by media exposure.

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The Reproduction of Inequality Through Volunteering by Young Refugees in Uganda

Okech,

Baillie Smith,

Fadel

et al. 2024

Voluntas

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Research confronting inequality in volunteering has mostly focused on the attribution of its benefits to different groups and communities, with little attention paid towards fundamental factors that shape such inequalities and how these intersect with volunteering opportunities. This paper highlights the importance of volunteering for young refugees in Uganda, as a means of both learning new skills and earning a livelihood. However, evidence suggests that not everyone has equal access to these opportunities, with inequalities primarily distributed along the lines of language, gender and education. The paper provides a critical examination of the kinds of volunteering organised and promoted by state actors and civil society organisations with a particular focus on access to volunteering opportunities and the ways they can produce inequalities among young people. Based on data drawn from a study among young refugees from South Sudan, Burundi, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in four settings in Uganda, the paper explores issues of access to opportunities as a core premise around which these inequalities are shaped. It demonstrates that rather than address social inequality, the obfuscation of these experiences in how volunteering is organised only serves to reinforce the status quo.

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Uneven geographies of youth volunteering in Uganda: Multi-scalar discourses and practices

Cited by 4 publications

References 34 publications

Young people ‘making it work’ in a changing climate

Young people ‘making it work’ in a changing climate

Assessing the ‘Why’ in Volunteering for Refugees: Exploring Volunteer Motivations

The Reproduction of Inequality Through Volunteering by Young Refugees in Uganda

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