Voluntourism

I recently completed a presentation, and soon to complete a report on the ‘recipients’ of care. We linked it closely to the idea of volunteer tourism, which we used an existing aggregating term ‘voluntourism’, with the volunteers being called ‘voluntourists’. Just read through the entire list of themes and realized that there will come another group who concentrates on volunteer tourism, and that these are in fact different focuses.

Anyhoo, our presentation was to construct a question based on the theme and our question provided a picture of a ‘White” volountourist surrounded by her ‘recipients’ of care. We aimed to question how the advertisement reinforced the power structures between the ‘White’ and the ‘non-White’, as well as problematizing the term ‘recipients’ of care. It’s something we take for granted, that we volunteer, and that we give care to the Others (here used in a way which signifies you distance yourselves from the Other, thus creating the divide between who ‘we’ are and who ‘they’ are.

But are we really that different?

The political answer is no, we are all the same. I think, yes. Yes, why? I won’t go deeper than to say the following. I defend myself and say that it’s not the colour of our skin. After all, in the dichotomous global North and global South, the First World and the Third World, I, a Singaporean Chinese, the privileged educated female, belong to the global South, the Third World. Yes, me! The Chinese, (dominant group) in Singapore (one of the most expensive cities to live in *rolls eyes, so much contention*), educated (good, yes?) female (no good). All these intersecting factors fade into the background of the Anglo-centric definition of the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Where do I put myself then? In the Third World with my fellow Southeast Asian people? Or do I stick to Asia? How about the global South? But I’m educated, and kinda not living in poverty.. I speak English as my first language. And am in a position to go and travel and be a voluntourist. From the above, I should be a ‘recipient’ of care, but me, going to give care? Can’t be right, can it. So yes, we are different. We are all different, and these differences are so vast one cannot begin to imagine the inexhaustible task of individuating everyone based on their intersectionalities, their multiple identities and positions. That’s why we are groups together, for ease, into the North and South. And from there we claim sameness to begin our task of the geographies of responsibilities.

I digressed too much.

The group doing on the volountourism asked this question “Volunteer tourism does more harm than good. Discuss”.

What my group did made me think about the intentions and goals of voluntourism. Like many ‘good’ things we volunteer to do, it is mostly with good intentions to help. Help who? Ourselves? To fulfil some inner altruistic need, to ‘experience’, to grow and be a better person, to fuly appreciate the life we have when seeing what others are lacking (and still being contented), the list goes on. How often does one help expecting absolutely nothing but the development of these strangers in return? Are you sure they want it?

We grew up faced with these advertisements reinforcing power structures every day. We are told we have the power to help, the ability to afford it. We all have more than we need, and we can change someone’s life by giving them some of our extras! Yes, it is all good and honest, but it does create the geographical imagination of the poor distant other. Something you are not. You are different, and you can help.

They give us care too. They help us assimilate into their environment, they cook our meals, they guide us, and very so often we as young students go there to offer our labour, we know shit about the actual labour they do. Yes yes I’m assuming the persona of the “us” against the “them”. Why? Even though I am in the global South, I’ve never been one whom voluntourist ‘help’, but I’ll be one of the voluntourist who go out to other countries to ‘help’.

All these useless words, I meant to conclude with how I was thinking if I were in the position of the advertiser, how will I go about giving care? I certainly cannot do it alone, and in trying to reach out to other people, will I actually them to help others for nothing in return?

Comparing a “get ready for a life-changing experience, see how the children from Chiang Mai live their lives and help them learn English to get better job opportunities!” as compared to “children in Chiang Mai may be content with what they have, but most probably not, we don’t know. They can improve their living conditions if they have better job opportunities, so we try to teach them English, to force them to conform to the Anglo-centric world and cater to these tourist. Interact with them and make them feel happy, but when you leave they may be heartbroken. Besides, 3 weeks of learning English will never make any real impact. Repeated doings will just break these children. But still, come, because we might be able to contribute, somehow”.

I’m so tired, sigh. Not a good week, thesis thinking not going faithfully.