"Students in discussion" Copyright © Emilie Crossley, All Rights Reserved

Wisdom & Insight

Voluntourism in the Classroom

Emilie Crossley, ESRC funded PhD student in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, UK

During the course of my PhD I have presented my research to many academics, professors, and experts in the field of Tourism Studies, but recently I shared my work with a very different audience for the first time: A Level students! In this column I would like to share my experience of bringing voluntourism research into classrooms, consider how this affected the analysis of my data, and think about the challenge of fostering critical pedagogies in voluntourism.

Researchers in Residence

I recently completed a placement as a ‘Researcher in Residence’ at the Gower College Swansea, UK, where I was working with groups of Sociology and World Development students to explore research methods and data generated in interviews with voluntourists. The Research Councils UK and Wellcome Trust funded scheme, which has sadly now come to an end after 17 years, aimed to bring cutting edge research into secondary school classrooms and to inspire students to pursue university studies and possibly even a career in research themselves.

As researchers, we are increasingly encouraged to do public engagement work in order to “empower people, broaden attitudes and ensure that the work of universities and research institutes is relevant to society and wider social concerns” (RCUK). The social sciences have tended to lag behind in this area and so I saw Researchers in Residence as an excellent opportunity to be an ambassador for this invaluable field of study whilst also developing my own ability to communicate my research to new audiences in engaging ways.

Voluntourism and Development

I wanted to present my research to the students in a way that would be accessible and enjoyable without losing the complexity of my findings. To give you a bit of background, my study involved repeatedly interviewing ten young people from the UK over a period of almost a year, from before their voluntourism placement through to several months afterwards. This resulted in a large amount of qualitative interview data which I analysed psychosocially, paying particular attention to cultural discourses, personal meanings, and affects, in order to explore the subjectivities, identities, and perceptions formed by voluntourists across time. The thought of trying to explain all of this to the students was daunting!

In the end I decided to opt for a more interactive style of workshop rather than a conventional presentation, letting the students get their hands on some of my data and asking them to have a go at interpreting them. The World Development students were given two page-long excerpts from two of my participants’ interview transcripts. In these interviews, the participants seemed to express ambivalence towards the concept of ‘development’ in a voluntourism context and I therefore saw the data as a springboard for discussion about the multiple relations between tourism and development. In order to comply with ethical standards in the social sciences, the transcripts were fully anonymized and students were not permitted to keep them after the workshop.

Through the data excerpts, the two voluntourists described a desire to see poverty alleviated in Africa. However, at the same time they were worried that socio-economic development would lead to the aesthetic and cultural annihilation of Africa through the homogenising forces of Western led globalization. My initial interpretation saw this latter concern as the priority in the narratives. The voluntourists seemed to be anxious to preserve Africa’s visual and cultural authenticity (primarily for Western enjoyment, as I perceived it) and used this as a justification for recommending that people in Africa should only have the bare minimum acceptable standard of living; “keep [Africa] as it is but to make sure, you know, that they have water”, as one voluntourist put it.

The students’ interpretations were far more straightforward and sympathetic to the position of the voluntourists than my rather harsh, academic critique. According to them, the voluntourists simply wanted Africa to develop in a way that was culturally sensitive and did not necessarily follow the Western model. The interesting thing about dealing with qualitative data is that it is open to multiple interpretations, all of which may be valid and say something useful about those data. Although I stand by my analysis, these discussions with the students were a valuable reminder of the importance of remaining open to alternative interpretations and compassionate towards research participants even if one is critical of the views that they express.

Critical Reflection and Desire

"Quantitative versus Qualitative" Copyright © Emilie Crossley, All Rights Reserved

Going into the classroom setting, I had wanted the students to become enthused about the research process and for them to reflect critically on the attitudes towards development produced in voluntourism. To some extent this did happen, but what I had not expected, perhaps naïvely, was the number of students who expressed an interest in becoming voluntourists themselves. “I want to go to Africa”, said one. “Yeah, me too!”, piped up another. Without wanting to discourage the students, I advised them to be careful when selecting ethical travel options, warning them of the proliferation of for-profit voluntourism organisations and programmes of questionable value to host communities.

In that moment, I was reminded of the work of Kate Simpson (2004) who feels that the British gap year and many voluntourism activities lack a ‘pedagogy of social justice’. According to Simpson’s research, many young people return from their travel experiences with a limited understanding of the dynamics involved in global disparities in wealth and she therefore advocates practices that encourage education and critical reflection on these issues. The students’ exclamations about wanting to visit Africa reminded me of the challenge of trying to promote such a pedagogy in the face of the powerful forces of desire and enjoyment that fuel the tourism industry, even within voluntourism.

Final Thoughts

Being a Researcher in Residence has certainly given me a lot to think about and I hope that it has done the same for my students. Of course, going into schools and colleges is just one form of public engagement and I believe strongly that users and producers of voluntourism should engage with researchers and universities, not only in order to benefit from that source of knowledge, but to contribute to it too. In recent years there has been a boom in the academic literature on voluntourism and with its increasing popularity as a travel option, and multiple varieties to be researched and explored, this trend is set to continue. Exciting times lie ahead in terms of our understanding of voluntourism, potential collaborations between practitioners, researchers, and educational institutions, and public engagement with this fascinating field.

References

Research Councils UK (RCUK), RCUK Public Engagement. Available at: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/per/Pages/Home.aspx [accessed 20 November 2011].

Simpson, K. (2004) ‘Doing development’: The gap year, volunteer-tourists and a popular practice of development’, Journal of International Development, 16, pp. 681–692.

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