Paper long abstract:

Hundreds of western volunteers work for a few weeks or several months every year, in reception centres for sick, injured or dying people run by the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Simple tasks (cleaning, first aid, etc.) liken this voluntary involvement to amateur humanitarian work, which is particularly well-suited to the aspirations of people lacking the specific skills for more professional activities. The amateur nature of the practice gives this voluntary work an ambiguous quality: it can be viewed as a humanitarian activity or a tourist activity. More precisely, it represents an atypical form of tourism, which could be considered as "humanitarian tourism". In this universe, however, dedicated to the assistance of poor Indian people, the "tourist", whose trip has no other goal than that of a presence in India, remains an illegitimate figure and the attributes associated with "ordinary tourism" (sightseeing, relaxation, spending, etc.) are generally stigmatized. A majority of volunteers do not indeed consider their stay as a holiday trip, even if the exotic framework of voluntary work in the Missionaries of Charity Centres (which radically differs from voluntary practices in the country of origin), is one of the reasons which frequently motivates the trip. Therefore, to understand this specific figure of tourism, we must at the same time explain the ambiguity of the practice and the meaning that the volunteers give to their practice.