Abstract
This paper explores volunteering and inequality in the global South through an analysis of volunteering remuneration. We argue that the growing remuneration of volunteers reflects an increasing financialisation of volunteering by aid and development donors to match labour to project and sectoral objectives. We examine how these remuneration strategies shape volunteering economies and (re)produce hierarchies and inequalities in contexts in the global South where volunteers are often from marginalised communities. We analyse data collected in Africa and the Middle East as part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Global Review on Volunteering to explore these interweaving volunteering hierarchies and how they articulate with existing social stratifications. In these contexts, we argue that a livelihoods and capabilities approach across macro-, national and local levels provides an alternative and more nuanced way of accounting for volunteer remuneration within the range of assets that communities have to build their lives and future. When oriented towards catalysing these community assets, and away from rewarding particular kinds of individual labour, remuneration has the potential to enable rather than undermine sustained volunteering activity by and within marginalised communities.
Highlights
The global inequalities that shape humanitarian and development activity have often been under-theorised within volunteering studies, remaining as a broad backdrop and context
We bring together debates around volunteering, livelihoods, financialisation and development to suggest a new framework for exploring volunteering remuneration in the global South. We do this in order to: explore the ways aid and donor remuneration strategies can inadvertently shape patterns and forms of volunteering in the global South; reveal the volunteering hierarchies produced by particular forms of remuneration; and begin to develop an account of volunteer remuneration that locates it within the range of assets that communities have to help build their livelihoods and futures
Scholars have rightly noted that remuneration has particular significance in global South settings where volunteers are often drawn from marginalised communities themselves, and are struggling to build their own livelihoods as well as committing to support others (Patel et al 2007; Wig 2016; Butcher and Einolf 2017)
Summary
The global inequalities that shape humanitarian and development activity have often been under-theorised within volunteering studies, remaining as a broad backdrop and context. We examine how these remuneration strategies shape volunteering economies and (re)produce hierarchies and inequalities in contexts in the global South where volunteers are often from marginalised communities.
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