‘Struggling to Do the Right Thing’: challenges during international volunteering

Abstract

This article focuses on young adults from Germany who accomplish one year of voluntary service in various social projects in Uganda. The participants are between 18 and 28 years of age and most of them stay abroad for about 12 months. The study investigates conceptual approaches of experiences and asks for transnational experiences or experiences made in the context of transnationalism. Spaces, in which differences and conflicts can be bridged and negotiated, are meetings amongst the volunteers themselves as well as amongst volunteers and Ugandans, who then become ‘cultural agents'. The community therewith offers a save space of exchange, in which the volunteers do not feel obliged to constantly reflect on their actions, practices and behaviour. In sum, the empirical material shows the different reasons for the young adults to accomplish a year of voluntary service in Uganda. Challenges the volunteers face during their stay can be shown additionally. Doing this, I am developing the concept of ‘inconsistency of status' from the empirical material and also highlight the ways in which the volunteers are dealing with their ‘situations of ambivalence'. Last but not least this ambivalences will be discussed as ‘In-betweenness' and this ‘In-betweenness' as an opportunity.

Notes

1 A Jones, ‘Assessing international youth service programmes in two low income countries’, Voluntary Action: The Journal of the Institute for Volunteering Research, 7, 2005, pp 87–100; T Kretenauer & N Gudulas, ‘Motive für einen Freiwilligendienst und die Identität Entwicklung im späten Jugendalter: Eine empirische Untersuchung zur Lebenslaufcharakteristik “neuen sozialen Engagements”’, Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie, 35(4), 2003, pp 221–228; M Mundorf, Christliche Freiwillgendienste im Ausland: Lernprozesse und Auswirkungen auf die Lebensentwürfe junger Menschen, Münster: Waxmann, 2000; and W Rehberg & K Kühne, Freiwillige internationale Einsätze von jungen Erwachsenen: Endbericht des Instituts für Sozialplanung und Sozialmanagement (iss) der Hochschule für Sozialarbeit (hsa), Bern: hsa, 2004.

2 This is part of a broader study which forms the basis of my doctoral project, which I am conducting as part of the ‘Transnational Social Support’ research training group, based at the Universities of Hildesheim and Mainz. The data which I draw on here was collected during three months of ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda in 2010. The main methods employed were participant observation and in-depth interviews of a small cohort of German volunteers, extracts of which are presented here. A key method for their interpretation has been discourse analysis. The dissertation is to be published in 2012.

3 In the study sample, all the young people had passed the higher education entrance examinations and most had spent 12 months in Uganda.

4 Cf the elaborations of Krettenauer & Gudulas, ‘Motive für einen Freiwilligendienst und die Identität Entwicklung im späten Jugendalter’; Mundorf, Christliche Freiwillgendienste im Ausland; and Jones, ‘Assessing international youth service programmes in two low income countries’.

5 Cf W Düx, G Prein, E Sass & C Tully, Kompetenzerwerb im freiwilligen Engagement: Eine empirische Studie zum informellen Lernen im Jugendalter, Wiesbaden: Juventa.

6 Thus it is my opinion that, as regards motives, a connection can be found between development aid workers and volunteers, as in this case too there is a mixture of ‘doing something worthwhile’ and ‘wanting to work abroad’. In his investigation into the motives of aid workers, Toni Hagen developed the following typology: idealists, adventurers, seekers of self-fulfilment, outsiders, careerists, and those wanting to show solidarity. T Hagen, Wem hilft Helfen? Motive des Helfenwollens, in Stiftung Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (ed), Lernen in der Einen Welt, Tübingen: Stiftung Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, 1993, p 185 ff.

7 K Lüscher, Die Ambivalenz von Generationenbeziehungen—eine allgemeine heuristische Hypothese, in L Winterhager-Schmid (ed), Erfahrung mit Generationen-Differenz, Weinheim: Beltz-Verlag, 2000, p 97 (author's translation).

8 P Mecheril & B Hoffarth, ‘Adoleszenz und Migration: zur Bedeutung von Zugehörigkeitsordnungen’, in V King & HC Koller (eds), Adoleszenz–Migration–Bildung: Bildungsprozesse Jugendlicher und junger Erwachsener, Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2009, p 242.

9 Cf A Walther, ‘Die Entdeckung der jungen Erwachsenen: eine neue Lebens-phase oder die Entstandardisierung des Lebenslaufs?’, in T Rietzke & M Galuske, (eds), Lebensalter und Soziale Arbeit: Junges Erwachsenenalter, Vol 4, Hohengehren: Schneiderverlag, 2008; and B Stauber & A Walther, ‘Junge Erwachsene’, in W Schröer, N Struck & M Wolff (eds), Handbuch Kinder- und Jugendhilfe, Weinheim: Juventa-Verlag, 2002.

10 The yoyo metaphor was developed by the European research network egris.

11 Cf G Ferreira, ‘Die Farbe unseres Geschlechts: Gedanken über “Rasse”, Transgender und Marginalisierung’, Polymorph, 2002, pp 117–129.

12 G Lucius-Hoene & A Deppermann, ‘Narrative Identität und Positionierung’, Gesprächsforschung—Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion, 5, 2004, pp 166–183, at http://www.gespraechsforschungonline.de/heft2004/galucius.pdf, accessed 10 May 2011 (author's translation).

13 This is not to say that young volunteers only find themselves in ambivalent situations. There are also many situations experienced by young people in the volunteering community which do not turn out to be ambivalent (and which may well be popular for precisely that reason).

14 Although educational spheres of action are characterised by ambivalence and paradox. See, for example, F Schütze, ‘Schwierigkeiten bei der Arbeit und Paradoxien des professionellen Handelns: ein grundlagentheoretischer Aufriß’, Zeitschrift für qualitative Bildungs-, Beratungs - und Sozialforschung (H. 1), 2000, pp 49–96. These challenges do not show up as such in the material.

15 R Frankenberg, ‘Weiße Frauen, Feminismus und die Herausforderung des Antirassismus’, in B Fuchs & G Habinger (eds), Rassismen & Feminismen: Differenzen, Machtverhältnisse und Solidarität zwischen Frauen, Vienna: Promedia, pp 51–66.

16 This is a good point at which to recall the link between ‘in-betweenness’ and the stage of early adulthood. While Christina and Michael's living situation is characterised by the fact that they have never lived in their own house and independently earned a living, this is connected to their age and the transition they are passing through from adolescence to adulthood. Nonetheless, a difference can be seen here from the status of professional development aid workers. Volunteers ‘amaze’ locals by travelling on public transport and motorcycle taxis and cooking over an open stove. Development aid workers, on the other hand, often stand out by driving large cars and living in walled-off houses. Perhaps this ‘simpler’ style of living means that volunteers are closer to Ugandans than are development aid workers. This question cannot be answered from the present data and thus raises interesting follow-on questions, such as how volunteers' closeness to Ugandans' everyday life might be used to improve local working conditions.

17 H Keupp, ‘Ambivalenzen postmoderner Identität’, in U Beck & E Beck-Gernsheim (eds), Riskante Freiheiten: Individualisierung in modernen Gesellschaften, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994, p 342 (author's translation).

18 Cf P Mecheril & B Hoffarth, ‘Adoleszenz und Migration’.

19 See, for example, A Scherr, Jugendsoziologie: Einführung in Grundlagen und Theorien, Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2009; K Hurrelmann, Lebensphase Jugend: Eine Einführung in die sozialwissenschaftliche Jugendforschung, Weinheim: Juventa-Verlag, 2007, (2) pp 87–100; and B Stauber & A Walther, ‘Junge Erwachsene’.

20 Cf C Lüscher, Die Ambivalenz von Generationenbeziehungen.

21 These results can also be applied to the work of professional development aid workers. It has become clear that challenges which the volunteers bring up or which can be observed in their everyday life are characterised by adolescence-specific aspects. Thus struggling to behave appropriately and the searching this involves has been linked with young people's task of finding their own position among the many levels of ‘in-betweenness’. This task cannot, however, be restricted only to young people. All people—especially in new, unfamiliar contexts—are called upon to adopt a position or take up a position themselves through their behaviour and comments, and are assigned a position by their conversation partner. While the young adults' ambivalent status seems to be shaped by their stage in life and their situation abroad, the development aid workers also act within a transnational context and, in a so-called developing country, are called upon every day to deal with issues related to poverty and wealth, lifestyle, belonging and disassociation. Thus professional development aid workers are also in ambivalent situations in which they often—like the young volunteers—‘struggle to behave appropriately’. Perhaps the young volunteers' struggle is all the more intense as they are generally in search of their own position and have less experience than the development aid workers in dealing with the living situation abroad.

22 N Glick Schiller, ‘Transnationality’, in D Nugent & J Vincent (eds), A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, pp 448–467; and L Pries, Die Transnationalisierung der Sozialen Welt, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

23 S Fürstenau & H Niedrig, ‘Hybride Identitäten? Selbstverortungen jugendlicher Transmigrantinnen’, Diskurs Kindheits- und Jugendforschung, 2(3), 2007, pp 247–262.

24 Pries 08.

25 P Levitt & N Glick Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing simultaneity: a transnational social field perspective on society’, International Migration Review, 38(3), 2004, pp 1002–1039.

26 Z Bauman, Moderne und Ambivalenz: Das Ende der Eindeutigkeit, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995, p 83.