Emotion, Volunteer-Tourism and Marginalised Youth

Abstract

The satirical news site ‘The Onion’ recently ran a piece entitled ‘6-Day Visit to Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture’ (The Onion, 2014). The humour of the piece relied on our familiarity with short volunteer-tourism trips to ‘developing countries’ as a widespread social practice in the Global North, and the claims made that such brief experiences are ‘extraordinary’ and ‘transformative’ with a hyperbolic emotion that is — ironically — becoming somewhat banal. But the wry laughter is followed by wider questions: why are such experiences surrounded by emotive claims of transformation? Are they as emotionally powerful as their participants’ claims suggest? If so, why? What is emotionality doing — what force is it exerting upon the participants or enabling them to exert upon the world around them? How are the emotional dynamics of such experiences playing into the way young people see themselves as subjects and negotiate their place in society?