Short Abstract

The panel interrogates volunteerism in the global South; its relationships to solidarity, agency, citizenship & labour; and its potential to reimagine development through & against national priorities, dominant development discourses & imaginaries, transnational civil society and changing aid flows.

Description

In this UN-proclaimed ‘International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development’, this panel explores volunteerism and its role in global and local development in and from the global South. While decolonial work and critiques of saviourism have challenged some international volunteering mobilities, they have also reified global north patterns and experiences of volunteerism. Global majority volunteerism has been less visible, and its roles, relationships, mobilities, histories and impacts less well understood.

This panel, drawing on the conference theme and especially the sub-theme of ‘grassroots agency, solidarity, and alternative visions’ explores volunteerism through international, national and local lenses. Moving beyond preoccupations with international volunteers from the global North, the panel will focus on ideas of solidarity, forms of citizenship and agency and expressions of development alternatives through volunteerism in and by the global South, paying particular attention to volunteerism in a post development aid context.

Building on a growing literature on global South forms of volunteerism, and volunteerism-as-labour, the panel firstly interrogates the emergence of new forms of solidarity and engagement though volunteerism; secondly explores issues around agency, coercion and state manipulation that emerge from volunteerism as an expression of (unpaid or precarious) labour within communities; thirdly examines its roles in development work as aid funding is withdrawn and how this is impacting organisations and volunteering economies.

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