Volunteer Tourism

The lifestyle politics of international development

Jim Butcher, Peter Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317750338
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

Just a generation ago the notion that holidays should be invested with ethical and political significance would have sounded odd. Today it is part of the lifestyle political landscape.

Volunteer tourism is indicative of the growth of lifestyle strategies intended to exhibit care and responsibility towards others less fortunate, strategies aligned closely with developing one's ethical identity and sense of global responsibility. It sits alongside telethons, pay-per-click, Fair Trade and ethical consumption generally as a way to "make a difference".

Volunteer tourism involves a personal mission to address the political question of development. It draws upon the private virtues of care and responsibility and disavows political narratives beyond this. Critics argue that this leaves the volunteers as unwitting carriers of damaging neoliberal or postcolonial assumptions, whilst advocates see it as offering creative and practical ways to build a new ethical politics. By contrast, this volume analyses volunteer tourism as indicative of a retreat from public politics into the realm of private experience, and as an expression of diminished political and moral agency.

This thought provoking book draws on development, political and sociological theory and is essential reading for students, researchers and academics interested in the phenomenon of volunteer tourism and the politics of lifestyle that it represents.

1 Introducing the lifestyle politics of volunteer tourism

DOI: 10.4324/9781315796376-1

An influential study defines volunteer tourists as those who ‘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’ (Wearing, 2001: 1). Another defines it as ‘utilizing discretionary time and income to travel out of the sphere of regular activity to assist others in need’ (McGehee and Santos, 2005: 760). Volunteer tourism can be characterised as a form of moral consumption, the aim of which is to assist development and conservation in the global South.

It is doubtful whether anyone saw their holidays as a chance to address the social and political problems of the day up until recently. The relationship of holidays to interventions into social and political issues was simply as a respite from the rigours of working life and perhaps community volunteering or political campaigning, a chance to recharge batteries or get inspired through visiting iconic cultural sites. Yet today volunteer tourism is part of a pervasive trend towards imbuing lifestyle choices themselves with social and political meaning.

Prior to the last two decades it is doubtful many international development volunteers saw their efforts as part of their holidays. Volunteers with organisations such as the United States Peace Corps and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in the UK would have baulked at the suggestion that their efforts were in any respect leisure pursuits. Today volunteering to help others abroad is readily linked to tourism. Fun, tailor-made itineraries and character-building experiences are prominent in the marketing of a growing number of commercial and charitable volunteer tour operators.

The association of conspicuous lifestyles with social and even political endeavours is novel and very much of our times. To talk of volunteer tourism a generation ago would have seemed odd. Today it is part of the culture in many societies. This book seeks to make sense of that.

Ethical fun and life-changing travel

‘Does the idea of travel to far off destinations appeal to you? How about the adventure of joining an expedition into the world’s greatest mountain ranges? And I expect you’d like to help a disadvantaged community and acquire new skills while working on an aid project … At the same time you’re probably thinking about how your gap year will fit into the broader picture, will it be something to impress future employers and how will it look on your CV?’

(Excerpt from Venture Co publicity cited in Simpson, 2004: 684)

‘Want to be more than a tourist? Have you got a taste for adventure? Do you want to make a real difference to the places you visit rather than just passing by? If so, why not combine adventure travel with important volunteer projects. Imagine … spotting a herd of wild elephants in South Africa before teaching some English lessons to local children … or hurtling through the Costa Rican jungle on a zip wire after helping to save endangered leatherback turtles. Your adventure starts here.’

(Excerpt from I-to-I Travel publicity, ibid.: 419)

A growing trend

Volunteer tourism has a profile in tourism marketing in media commentaries on the burgeoning ethical tourism sector and in education too. In the majority of this, the worthy gap year project or volunteer tourism scheme seamlessly merges fun-packed adventures with the acquisition of global citizenship and the chance to ‘make a difference’ in the world (an aspiration previously associated with politics).

According to the influential web site VolunTourism.org the first ever use of the term ‘voluntourism’ (synonymous with volunteer tourism) was by the Nevada Board of Tourism in 1988, who coined it to encourage volunteers to help in rural tourism projects (voluntourism.org, undated). David Clemmons, volunteer tourism entrepreneur and founder of Voluntourism.org, points out that Google had no search hits for ‘voluntourism’ in 2000, but by 2010 the term yielded over 300,000 hits, and that for something Clemmons argues is still in its infancy (cited in Vasquez, 2010). Commercial volunteer tourism companies and ethical gap year organisers have boomed. Some non-governmental organisations have also adapted to the trend, offering visitor-friendly trips to their development projects (Wearing and McGehee, 2013).

Today volunteer tourism projects operate in many countries and are organised by a range of operators including private companies, conservation and educational organisations, as well as non-governmental organisations (Broad, 2003; Söderman and Snead, 2008; Raymond and Hall, 2008). A 2008 survey of over 300 volunteer tourism organisations worldwide concluded that the market caters to 1.6 million volunteer tourists a year, with a monetary value of between £832 million and £1.3 billion ($1.7 billion and $2.6 billion) (ATLAS/TRAM, 2008). Growth in the sector has been most marked since the late 1990s (ibid.; Smith and Holmes, 2009). There is a focus on gap year volunteers, normally in the 18–25 age range, who make up the primary market (ATLAS/TRAM, 2008: 5; Jones, 2011: 535). Volunteer tourism is now mainstream, with gap years a significant part of pre- and post-university life in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and a number of other European countries (Tomazos and Cooper, 2012; Lyons et al., 2012).

According to a UK government commissioned report on gap year provision (defined in the report as ‘a period of time between three and twenty four months taken out of education or a work career’, hence a wider category than volunteer tourism), internationally there are over 800 organisations offering overseas volunteer placements in 200 countries (Jones, 2004). In total these organisations offer around 350,000 placement opportunities annually (ibid.). A 2007 Mintel study calculated that people undertaking volunteer projects abroad account for 10 per cent of the UK’s outbound tourism expenditure amounting to £960 million annually (Travel Weekly, 2007). In 2010 a further UK study estimated that up to 500,000 gap year students volunteered abroad. Their main activities included teaching English, animal conservation and building homes in poor rural communities (Neeves and Birgnall, 2010).

The activities undertaken by volunteers are diverse. The range includes community work such as building a school or clinic (Raleigh International, 2009), teaching English (Jakubiak, 2012) and conservation-based projects that involve scientific research or ecological restoration such as reforestation and habitat protection (Wearing, 2004). Typically volunteer projects involve linking community wellbeing and conservation in countries in the global South (Butcher and Smith, 2010).

The focus of the gap year and volunteer-sending organisations resonates with significant numbers of young people seeking to act upon their world outside of traditional political channels through the ethical consumption of holidays. It is in this spirit that gap year projects are encouraged by governments (Jones, 2004, 2011; Heath, 2007). Volunteering is seen as a way of developing a sense of global citizenship, the latter now a well-established part of the remit and curriculum of schools and universities (Advisory Group on Citizenship, 1998; Bednarz, 2003; Standish, 2008; Baillie Smith and Laurie, 2011). It is also endorsed by commercial companies seeking professional employees with international experience and an appreciation of global issues (Heath, 2007). Volunteer tourism has become a rite of passage taken by increasing numbers of internationally mobile young people, to do good, to be good and to make good.

Since Jost Krippendorf’s call for tourists to reflect, learn and moderate their behaviour in his book The Holiday Makers: Understanding the Impact of Leisure and Travel (1987), ethical tourism has grown and become a rhetorical orthodoxy amongst campaigners and concerned travellers. There are many variations on the theme: ecotourism, philanthropic travel, green tourism, community tourism, justice tourism and others. Volunteer tourism is just one, albeit prominent, focus of calls to make holidays morally virtuous – the volunteers are at the committed end of the ethical tourism spectrum (Coghlan, 2006). All the various ethical prefixes share a desire to distance their clientele from the mass consumption of tourism and the tourists who partake. All seek to reform the industry along ‘ethical’ lines (Butcher, 2003). Volunteer tourism is a case study that can reveal much about this wider advocacy of ethical tourism.

Adventures in humanitarian travel

In her 2011 New York Times account journalist Heidi Mitchell describes how tasks were determined largely by the volunteer organisations rather than by the locals. She sees it as dangerously close to poverty tourism. She cites the following volunteer tourism organisations and projects:

Project Brazil: favela Rocinha in Rio, day care for under 6-year-olds.

Community Development Peru: building traditional efficient cooking stoves and work in a women’s weaving co-op.

Elevate Destinations: to Haiti to rebuild orphanages in Port au Prince and Jacmel area.

Tribewanted: in what is described as a sustainable community experiment, ‘tribe members’ commit to one month average sleeping in basic accommodation and helping locals with microfinancing, tree clearing and building. One project is in Vorovorom, Fiji, where volunteers tend gardens, feed animals and plant trees.

Global Vision International: in Madagascar travellers can work alongside villagers to conserve, plant trees, promote fuel efficient stoves and educate residents on the environment.

Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village: house building in poor communities.

Global Volunteer Network: has placed more than 14,000 in twenty-two countries in the last nine years. Travellers sign up for a week or longer to orphanages, schools, refugee camps and animal shelters. On their organic farming project in Uganda, they help teach raised bed and double-dug farming as ways to maximise the soil’s potential. They also explain techniques of water conservation, composting and recycling. Also teachers.

African Conservation Experiences: focus on the long-term sustainability of wildlife, and this includes helping locals understand the importance of wildlife to their economies.

(Mitchell, 2011)

Volunteer tourism as politics?

Volunteer tourism has generated a significant field of study in human geography, tourism studies and sociology. Much of the literature seeks to ensure that the sector becomes ‘ethical’, and that it realises its potential as an innovative way to intervene to help others (e.g. Wearing, 2001; Broad, 2003; McGehee, 2002; Wearing and Deane, 2003; Zahra and McIntosh, 2007; Söderman and Snead, 2008; Pearce and Coghlan, 2008). This is effectively critical advocacy. This literature, like much of the advocacy of the ‘new moral tourism’ more broadly, tends to focus on small-scale, community-oriented tourism that explicitly aims to promote both conservation and community wellbeing (Mowforth and Munt, 1998; Butcher, 2003, 2007).

Other writing on volunteer tourism considers it in the context of either the rise of neoliberalism, the market-oriented focus of all aspects of life (e.g. Wearing and Wearing, 1999; Conran, 2011; Jones, 2011; Baillie Smith and Laurie, 2011; Tomazos and Cooper, 2012); or alternatively the legacy of colonialism (e.g. Caton and Santos, 2009; Guttentag, 2009; Palacios, 2010).

On both counts volunteer tourism is criticised as negative and lauded as positive in fairly equal measure. Sometimes the tourists are portrayed as perpetuating a neocolonial legacy (Simpson, 2005; Lyons et al., 2012), and at other times as a potential counter to this (Higgins-Desboilles and Mundine, 2008). Som...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introducing the lifestyle politics of volunteer tourism
• 2 From Peace Corps to volunteer holidays
• 3 Volunteer tourism in development perspective
• 4 The personal and the political in volunteer tourism
• 5 The lifestyle politics of volunteer tourism
• 6 Volunteer tourism and global citizenship
• 7 The volunteers: postcolonial, neoliberal or diminished subjects?
• 8 Conclusion
• Index