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Paper short abstract:

The paper represents a preliminary discussion of my Ph.D. project's core themes, including a critique of overly essentialistic readings of individual trajectories between activism and NGO work and an exploration of individual strategies to (re)negotiate agency within organisational structures.

Paper long abstract:

The debate on NGOisation has extensively explored the individual trajectories between activism and professionalisation of so-called "local actors" in the Global South, but part of such scholarship restitutes a unidimensional, overly linear picture of their pathways, proposing simplistic or deterministic explanations of their behaviour and aspirations (i.e., McMahon, 2017; Gready & Robins, 2017; Ali, 2018; Abu-Assab, Nasser-Eddin, and Seghaier, 2020).

In this project, I argue that "local actors" coming from activism are often aware of the contradictions implicit in their trajectories, that they develop strategies to navigate the challenges and opportunities created by NGOisation, and that such strategies are deployed in the attempt to (re)negotiate agency amidst several context-specific pressures and organisational constraints. My analysis intends to contest what I believe to be a frequent recur by scholars to morally invested categories in framing the behaviour of activist-workers, and the role of such categories in reproducing biases around the moral exceptionalism of the humanitarian.

The research questions guiding my analysis are how (and why) some activist-workers develop and deploy strategies to (re)negotiate agency and (re)politicise NGO work practices, and how they signify such efforts in relation to their pathways between activism and NGO work.

The research methodology involves an analysis of individual trajectories as case studies. Specifically, I focus on the trajectories of activist-workers from the SWANA region operating in the transnational space (and particularly in the diaspora) because I consider their case(s) to offer a privileged standpoint to reflect on the limitations of the debate on "localisation" and "professionalisation".

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Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at women working in Vietnam’s NGO sector. It reveals the distinctive class politics. It shows that women claim a middle-class status based on caregiving acts and sacrifice. It reveals NGOs as the domain of social reproduction of gender relations for welfare restructuring projects.

Paper long abstract:

Since the late 1980s, with the economic reforms, known as đổi mới, Vietnam has experienced vigorous marketisation and privatisation processes with a growing private sector substituting the state as the provider of social welfare. The process, in Vietnam, is alternatively referred to as “socialisation”, which resonates with the socialist genealogy for collectivisation of means of welfare production invoking all people’s responsibility for collective welfare. Under the socialisation rationale, the people participating in welfare provisions claim class privileges for symbolic acts of caring for the welfare of the self and others, which are increasingly equated with commodified products and services. These claims are inseparable from the politics of Vietnam’s economic reforms which are claimed to develop a socialist-oriented market economy. The paper looks at women working in the NGO sector in Hanoi and reveals the distinctive class privileges in terms of rights, entitlements and well-being. It shows that women claim a middle-class status based on their acts of caregiving and sacrifice. Findings in this respect reveal the role of NGOs as the domain of women’s emancipation but also social reproduction of gender relations, as the sector reinforces of cultural and symbolic appeal of caregiving work to women, especially when care becomes scarce and expensive in the context of welfare restructuring.

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Paper short abstract:

Transnational feminism, which lies at the intersection of activism and professionalism in development, is the case study of the present research and the case study that allows us to explore the porous boundary between activism and professionalism.

Paper long abstract:

Transnational feminism certainly lies at the intersection of activism and professionalism in development. In particular, we want to refer to one of its distinctive forms of activism: the transnational feminist networks (TFN) that emerged during the Conferences on Women, organised by the United Nations, between 1975 and 1995. On these occasions, feminists shape transnational activism that creates, at a time usually considered to be one of feminism's decline (as well as its professionalization), new languages, frameworks, practices and networks. Since the end of the conferences, activists, experts, and many NGOs have defined a feminist advocacy strategy that reaches the present day, most notably the Commission on the Status of Women, now the United Nations' main body for women's rights. One of these transnational feminist networks, the Women's Rights Caucus, is the case study of the present research that allows us to explore, through the complicated building of alliances between feminists from the global North and South, the porous boundary between activism and professionalism.

To fully understand what TFN are, the historical evolution of this form of activism will be illustrated, dwelling on the 1980s (with particular reference to the 1985 Nairobi Conference) to analyse the alleged "NGOization" of the women's and feminist movements. The case considered allows us to delineate the complexity underlying the concepts of activism and professionalism and the different conceptions that change depending on the historical period and mainly on the background of the activists located at the intersection of gender, race, class and religion.

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Paper short abstract:

Decentralised Cooperation from sub-state governments in the Global North, is gaining a significant role in the general international cooperation for development framework. Their proximity with other main actors like NGDOs, the Academy, and Civil Society allows interesting interactions and synergies.

Paper long abstract:

The international cooperation for development framework has been in debate from its very beginning. Throughout different time-space contexts and actors, both in the Global North and South, the proper concepts of cooperation and development themselves, are theorized and practiced differently and subject of critical arguments.

My presentation aims to bring into dialogue and debate, the different actors involved, which I am also a part of as an activist academic. Volunteering in some moments; working at several Basque NGODs; and lately at eLankidetza – the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation, while being on and off the academic world as well. If there is such a thing as a Basque Cooperation, it is due to those different actors involved from the very beginning with their synergies, debates, discussions, exchanges, and tensions.

The context provided by the Decentralised Cooperation sustained by sub-state governments, allows chances but also challenges, to define and put into action, international cooperation in other ways: more collaborative, in respect and reciprocity; in proximity, coordination, and management with and by the diverse actors both in the North and South; and with a needed de(s)colonial and decolonizing intersectionality thinking and doing, to confront the heteropatriarchal racist colonial extractivist system and their impacts on humans, non-humans, and more-than-humans.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores NGDO professionalisation in Italy, tracing the shift from grassroots to professionalism. It delves into tensions between volunteerism and professionalism, driven by accountability and management needs. NGDOs address this by emphasizing motivation to reconcile both aspects.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the nuanced landscape of professionalisation within Italian non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs). Drawing on critical management studies and primary data from in-depth interviews and structured observations, the study examines the evolution of NGDOs from grassroots, volunteer-driven entities to highly professionalised institutions.

The concept of “professionalisation” encompasses specialisation of non-profit activities and formalisation of staff training, leading to increased work intensification. Historically, NGDOs have operated by fostering a voluntary and grassroots ethos. However, the drive for accountability, efficient management and formalised skills has led to a shift towards professionalism.

The tension between volunteerism and professionalism arises, as critics argue that the latter transforms egalitarian working environments into hierarchical structures. Funding dynamics have played a key role in this transformation, creating cyclical pressures for NGDOs to professionalise and bureaucratise in order to manage increasingly complex projects.

While professionalisation is seen as necessary to secure diverse institutional funding, increase capacity to attract professional staff, ensure financial sustainability and legitimacy towards donors, the paper highlights potential drawbacks. Over-professionalisation can distance NGDOs from their grassroots origins, weakening downward accountability. Centrality of paid staff, shift from internal support to professional expertise and hierarchical differentiation between NGDOs are also identified as consequences. Ultimately, Italian NGDO practitioners manage these contradictions by emphasising strong staff motivation, reconciling the ethos of volunteerism with demands of professionalism. Motivation emerges as a crucial factor, providing an antidote to the potential loss of meaning associated with excessive professionalisation and fostering resilience in the face of sectoral difficulties and uncertainties.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of research at the individual and organisational levels of decision making within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia's bilateral donor agency, set against the constant oscillations between the political and technocratic rationales for its aid program.

Paper long abstract:

The Developmental Leadership Program (DLP) is a DFAT-funded international research program that focuses on the role of leadership, power, and politics in development. In its third phase, it comprised seven research projects across the Asia-Pacific region. This paper presents findings from a three-and-a-half-year period of embedded doctoral research with DLP. It explores the political economy of Australia’s international development ecosystem, and the constant oscillations between the political and technocratic rationales to establish the legitimacy of foreign aid, providing the backdrop for the analysis of how research, evidence, and expertise are sought and used by a major bilateral donor agency. The embedded research involved long-term, multi-sited, multi-modal, and sustained observation of DLP's engagement with DFAT and with project teams over a period of considerable upheaval during COVID-19. This was complemented with data from over 50 interviews with officials, diplomats, locally engaged staff, managing contractors, consultants, academics, researchers, and development professionals, on their experiences of research uptake with DFAT and DFAT-funded programs. Individual motivations, intrinsic biases, and perceptions and interpretations of research are explored, and how they influence bureaucratic strategies for using research to inform policy and programming. Along with the tensions in navigating managerial incentive structures while upholding disciplinary leanings, professional interests, and personal causes, this paper identifies where research is used in DFAT’s design, implementation, and evaluation processes, and the influence of foreign policy priorities and DFAT’s institutional dynamics and organisational culture on research use. Recommendations to strengthen DFAT’s capabilities to engage effectively with research and evidence are also discussed.

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Paper short abstract:

This is an exploratory work based on my previous research of market-based development projects suggesting a framework that attempts to help understand how individual development organisations integrate communities into exploitative market system through use of best practices.

Paper long abstract:

The Pluriverse Post-Development Dictionary categorises efficiency, growth, sustainable development, and other mainstream keywords as reformist. These terms have been packaged as the natural order of things and often are not questioned by development implementors as being political. As a result, development projects tend to integrate local communities into one global capitalist system and reproducing exclusion, exploitation, and oppression.

While this view sheds light on many problems of modern mainstream development approaches and gives alternative frameworks for organisation based on social justice, it lacks an understanding of how such problematic integration occurs on the level of a development implementor and a local community. It would be incorrect to assume that individual projects are exclusive or exploitative by intend of the implementors and not by design of the ‘one world’ system.

A framework that can capture this and, at the same time, is not freeing implementors from their responsibility, would be vital for understanding why development projects tend to follow integration rather than finding grassroots solutions. This work attempts to make such a framework by basing itself in pluriversal understanding of development and using two mechanisms of maintenance of durable inequality proposed by Charles Tilly. By following norms and best practices implementors emulate exploitative behaviour to which communities adapt. This leaves little space for communities to follow their own paths.

At this stage this is an exploratory theoretical work based on my previous research on market-based development projects which requires feedback to understand which direction it can follow.