Refusing Reform, Reworking Pity, or Reinforcing Privilege? The Multivalent Politics of Young People’s Fun and Friendship within a Volunteering Encounter

Ruth Cheung Judge

doi:10.1111/anti.12635

Abstract

AbstractThis paper analyses initiatives which took British young people from ethnic minority and disenfranchised backgrounds to volunteer in sub‐Saharan Africa. It asks whether decolonial possibilities can be seen in the politics of youthful fun and friendship amid a practice undeniably driven by interpenetrating neocolonial logics, where enrolment in helping “needy” others is seen as a means to “improve” working‐class and racially marked youth. The paper argues that volunteers’ investments in leisure constituted a politics of refusal towards how they were acted upon as objects of concern. More ambivalently, playful, friendly interactions between British and African youth disrupted relations of charitable pity and signalled desires for solidarity and equality, but cannot be claimed as fully decolonial. At times, fun also re‐entrenched neocolonial and other oppressive relations. Overall, the paper demonstrates that a close reading of the multivalent, affective politics of young people’s fun and friendship can reveal much about the reproduction or subversion of contemporary neocolonial logics that operate both within and beyond the borders of postcolonial Britain.

Highlights

This paper analyses the politics of fun and friendship within initiatives which took British teenagers to volunteer in sub-Saharan Africa
This paper asks if, when, and how young people’s affective, emotional and performative politics of fun and friendship may contain decolonial possibilities, through a close reading of fun and friendship within a practice that is undeniably driven by neocolonial logics
This paper has explored the politics of young people’s fun and friendship in a specific “doubly neocolonial” site, where enrolment in neocolonial practices of “helping” Africa hopes to catalyse the “improvement” of working-class and racialised youth within the postcolonial nation

Summary

Introduction

It does so by drawing on work in feminist geopolitics, emotional geographies, and children’s geographies which sees young people’s humour, play, friendly relations, and the adoption or avoidance of particular subject positions, as under-acknowledged forms of politics (Fluri 2019; Kallio and H€akli 2013; Skelton 2013). This paper asks if, when, and how young people’s affective, emotional and performative politics of fun and friendship may contain decolonial possibilities, through a close reading of fun and friendship within a practice that is undeniably driven by neocolonial logics.

Results

Conclusion