Paper short abstract:

This paper discuss the implications of researching intentions of 'doing good' by considering volunteering practices as modes of mattering that blur the usual divisions between researchers and interlocutors, refugees and volunteers, guests and hosts, academic and humanitarian interventions.

Paper long abstract:

On the backdrop of the collaborative research network Helping Hands: Research Network on the on the Everyday Border work of European Citizens, which explores different modes of volunteer work in support of refugees coming to Europe, this paper discuss the implications of researching intentions and practices of 'doing good'. In much research on humanitarianism the act of helping is often problematized to an extent where doing good is almost equalized to doing bad. The relations between volunteers and those who are supposed 'to be helped' are questioned as euro-centric, selfish and ego-altruistic. The different shapes of volunteer work, I will argue, however entails a number of twist and turns of formal roles and power relations, which needs careful ethnographic attention. This scrutiny stimulates further questions such as where and how are borders working in practice, and for whom does the border work? And further, which methodological and analytical implications do these twists and turns have for ethnographic research? I will reflect on these questions by considering the everyday border work of volunteering as modes of mattering that blur the usual divisions between researchers and interlocutors, refugees and volunteers, guests and hosts, academic and humanitarian interventions, that are mobilised in the process.