Organisations manoeuvring within a criticized sector: A study of the framing of activities and goals within the volunteering and travelling sector
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2022-08-30
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
This thesis analyses the framing of the goals and activities of travelling and volunteering organisations. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the debate on societal values related to voluntourism by researching the activities of the organisations that are in some way related to voluntourism and the way they frame these practices. To reach this goal, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven organisations and five travellers. This thesis concluded that the organisations are aware of the critiques that surround their sector and try to act on these critiques. There are different ways in which the organisations counteract the critiques. These measures can be related to several different debates on voluntourism, cosmopolitanism and global citizenship, but there are also still connections to the debates of the white saviour complex and dependency. The measures taken come with new challenges and negative consequences as the privilege and inequality that comes with travelling from the Global North to the Global South cannot be prevented and there are cases of the framing of the activities changing, but the activities not changing at the root. This creates inequality between travellers and the local community, but also inequality between the travelling and volunteering organisations and local partners. Organisations and travellers are often not aware of the inequality and privilege that are part of their travels. The recommendations that are made, are for the organisations to be aware of whether their activities are changing or merely the framing of the activities and to consider the white saviour complex and dependency theory in their goals and activities and include these debates in the trainings and information given to their travellers.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen