Decolonising the Study Tour: An Ethnography of a Student Internship with a New Delhi NGO

ABSTRACT

Although intended to improve students’ intercultural competence and global-mindedness, study tours can reinforce assumptions and accentuate social and political hierarchies. Study tours involving students from the Global North interning with development organisations in the Global South are at risk of embodying the pitfalls of volunteer tourism – producing simplistic understandings of the Global South as a place of need, and of development as something that comes from outside the Global South. This paper presents the results of an ethnography of a study tour that involved Australian undergraduates interning with an NGO in New Delhi, India. Evidence from this study tour suggests that making the potential neo-colonial or ‘White Saviour’ dynamics of the tour an explicit focus of assessment is an effective strategy for ensuring students engage with the social, economic and political positioning of the tour. Further, local host organisations can act strategically to maximise the value of volunteer interns when the program is structured according to the principles of participatory development.

KEYWORDS:

• Study tour
• voluntourism
• intercultural skills
• decolonisation

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Developing Young Lives for making this study tour such a rich learning experience for all of us, and for participating so generously in this research. We would like to sincerely thank all the University of Melbourne students who participated in this study tour, particularly our co-researchers Catherine Frith and Stella Ulm. Thanks also to those who supported this study tour from the University of Melbourne (Belinda Day, Casey Hollway, Benita Ho and Mark Elgar) and from GoVolunteer. This research was approved by the Human Ethics Advisory Group at the University of Melbourne (Ethics ID 1851888).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda Gilbertson

Amanda Gilbertson is a Senior Research Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests lie in the reproduction and contestation of class and gender inequalities in urban India. She is the author of Within the Limits: Moral Boundaries of Class and Gender in Urban India (OUP, 2017).

Naomi Parris-Piper

Naomi Parris-Piper is a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) graduate with majors in Geography and Politics and International Studies from the University of Melbourne, where she now tutors in the School of Geography, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences. Her undergraduate thesis research examined the political ecology of ecotourism on Palawan island, The Philippines, drawing attention to the intensifying role of social media platforms in shaping environments and livelihoods in coastal tourism destinations. She is predominantly interested in researching how both tourism and conservation are linked to issues of social and environmental justice.

Nicole Robertson

Nicole Robertson holds a Bachelor of Emergency Health (Paramedic) from Monash University and a Bachelor of Arts from Melbourne University, in which she majored in Anthropology and Geography. Taking a break from study before attempting an Honours degree, Nicole is currently working for a Higher Education technology start-up as an Enterprise Architect and a Cyber Security Officer, in which her anthropology background has been surprisingly relevant. Watching a technology start-up develop from the inside has led to her increasing research interest in organisational culture and leadership.