Screen-reader caption for blind or visually impaired people: a Eurocentric world map showing the colonial sea routes between continents. Photo credits: James Chesire & Valentina D’Efilippo, for data referenches see jcheshire.com.
This brief history of volunteerism took form thanks to a panel discussion taking place during 2022’s Exchange Platform Meeting of Service Civil International (SCI), and became a paragraph of my own PhD dissertation, which is available on request. This version has been edited for length and clarity. You can support and show your gratitude to Service Civil International (SCI) here, and specifically to SCI Belgium here for organizing and holding space so that this knowledge could be co-created – mention does not equate absolute endorsement.
Voluntourism came out when the tourism industry merged with international volunteering for development.
Back in the 90s, when international travel became more affordable and mainstream, a debate started around North-to-South tourism. Two factions emerged: on the one hand, there was praise for this new mass-industry’s potential to channel economic growth, environmental and cultural conservation, infrastructural improvement, cultural exchange and political stability from the “North” to the “South”. On the other hand, there was concern and criticism for yet another round of interaction between these two historical entities happening in hierarchical, unequal and commodified terms – with additional prospects of environmental and cultural pollution. Such criticism made clients hesitant enough to provoke the tourist industry’s reaction: i.e. rebranding its offer as supposedly alternative or conscious tourism.
In the early 2000s, however, criticism came to target alternative tourism as well, recognizing its manipulative attempt to regain buyers’ trust. Again, potential clients themselves started reconsidering their participation in yet another round of global South exploitation at the hands of Northerners. This round’s peculiarity was that, rather than trading on raw and precious materials including bodies and workforce as in colonial times, it trafficked good conscience to justify inaction. Until then, Northerners could avoid concrete anti-imperialist action by representing themselves in anti-conquest terms, as “innocent” and “well-meaning” life-long cosmopolitan aid workers. The alternative tourism industry made the same exoneration achievable short term for everyone, in the span of a conveniently packaged holiday.
The debate around voluntourism followed the very same progression, in parallel. The phenomenon was first defined in positive terms, for example by Wearing in 2001 (p. 1):
[…] volunteer in an organized way to undertake holidays that might involve aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society, the restoration of certain environments, or research into aspects of society or environment.
Empirical data was soon collected to support the claim that voluntourism experiences could predict volunteers’ involvement in social movement activism.
In the 2010s, two factions emerged again: respectively reviewing success stories to further frame the phenomenon as a force for good vs. highlighting the same-old nature of non-professional voluntourism.
Criticism grew in popularity across various disciplines and in popular culture in the past few years, and potential clients started shunning and boycotting voluntourism. But we have to be watchful of the industry’s current opportunistic rebranding: already appropriating decolonial, anti-racist and indigenous and trans-feminist slogans while serving the same neocolonial and neoliberal soup.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andriotis, Konstantinos. “Options in tourism development: Conscious versus conventional tourism.” Anatolia 13, no. 1 (2002): 73-85.
Dadpour, Rana, and Stephen Wearing. “Volunteer tourism agencies as intermediaries; communities’ empowerment through the production of new knowledge.” In CAUTHE 2013: Tourism and Global Change: On the Edge of Something Big: On the Edge of Something Big, pp. 131-134. Christchurch, NZ: Lincoln University, 2013.
Guttentag, Daniel A. “The possible negative impacts of volunteer tourism.” International journal of tourism research 11, no. 6 (2009): 537-551.
Mahrouse, Gada. “Feel-good tourism: An ethical option for socially-conscious Westerners?.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 10, no. 3 (2011): 372-391.
McGehee, Nancy Gard, and Carla Almeida Santos. “Social change, discourse and volunteer tourism.” Annals of tourism research 32, no. 3 (2005): 760-779.
Palacios, Carlos M. “Volunteer tourism, development and education in a postcolonial world: Conceiving global connections beyond aid.” Journal of sustainable tourism 18, no. 7 (2010): 861-878.
Raymond, Eliza. “Make a difference!’the role of sending organizations in volunteer tourism.” Journeys of discovery in volunteer tourism: International case study perspectives (2008): 48-60.
Raymond, Eliza Marguerite, and C. Michael Hall. “The development of cross-cultural (mis) understanding through volunteer tourism.” Journal of sustainable tourism 16, no. 5 (2008): 530-543.
Simpson, Kate. “‘Doing development’: The gap year, volunteer‐tourists and a popular practice of development.” Journal of International Development: The Journal of the Development Studies Association 16, no. 5 (2004): 681-692.
Wearing, Stephen, ed. Volunteer tourism: Experiences that make a difference. Cabi Publishing, 2001.
Wearing, Stephen, and Nancy Gard McGehee. “Volunteer tourism: A review.” Tourism management 38 (2013): 120-130.
noprofitideas.org 