This paper examines the current state of ‘volunteer tourism,’ both as a field of study and modern phenomenon. The foundation of the review rests upon themes initiated over 10 years ago in Volunteer ...Tourism: Experiences That Make a Difference (Wearing, 2001). The review begins with a discussion of the explosive growth of volunteer tourism (research and practice) and continues with an analysis of the literature utilizing a multiphasic format that reflects the volunteer tourism process. Specifically, the paper includes a review of research in the area of pre-trip motivations, continues through work focussing on the volunteer tourism experience itself with emphasis on the role of the volunteer tourism organization and the community, and ends with discussion of the literature in the areas of post-trip reflections and transformations. Conclusions include recommendations for future research.
Voluntourism or volunteer tourism is increasingly available and popular amongst everyday tourists in different parts of the world. Despite its seeming virtue and it often being positioned as a form ...of “justice” or “goodwill” tourism, critics in the public media have begun to question and criticize the effectiveness or “real” value of volunteer tourism. However, academic work has not yet critiqued volunteer tourism in the same manner. This paper thus provides a critical and timely review of volunteer tourism, using interviews and participant observation with 11 respondents on a volunteer tourism trip to South Africa. This paper reviews volunteer tourists’ motivations (what prompted their participation); performances of the “self” in volunteer tourism; and the tensions and paradoxes surrounding volunteer tourism.
Orphanage tourism refers to visits or volunteering in orphanages as part of a holiday or tourist experience. Orphanage tourism is a consumer product which represents the intersection of the desire of ...orphanage operators to gain access to international funding and the desire of tourists and volunteers to give back to less developed countries. Despite its popularity amongst tourists and volunteers, orphanage tourism has come under increasing scrutiny and criticism for its impacts on child rights, development, and the role it plays in driving the unnecessary institutionalization of children, child trafficking and exploitation in residential care settings. This article outlines differing perspectives on orphanage tourism and volunteering from the last decade of research. It examines the contexts in which orphanage tourism occurs and outlines the drivers for this form of tourism. In addition, it discusses the implications of orphanage tourism for children including impacts on child agency, child rights, child development, child protection, and child trafficking and exploitation. We conclude that the limited benefits for children involved in orphanage tourism are outweighed by child protection concerns coupled with negative impacts on child agency, rights, and development.
How does ecotourism - conventionally characterized by its pursuit of a "natural" experience - confront assertions that "nature is over" attendant to growing promotion of the "Anthropocene"? One ...increasingly prominent strategy is to try to harness this "end of nature" itself as a novel tourism "product". If the Anthropocene is better understood as the Capitalocene, as some contend, then this strategy can be viewed as a paradigmatic example of disaster capitalism in which crises precipitated by capitalist processes are themselves exploited as new forms of accumulation. In this way, engagement with the Anthropocene becomes the latest in a series of spatio-temporal "fixes" that the tourism industry can be seen to provide to the capitalist system in general. Here I explore this dynamic by examining several ways in which the prospect of the loss of "natural" resources are promoted as the basis of tourism experience: disaster tourism; extinction tourism; voluntourism; development tourism; and, increasingly, self-consciously Anthropocene tourism as well. Via such strategies, Anthropocene tourism exemplifies capitalism's astonishing capacity for self-renewal through creative destruction, sustaining itself in a "post-nature" world by continuing to market social and environmental awareness and action even while shifting from pursuit of nonhuman "nature" previously grounding these aims.
This paper explores some of the ways in which “care” is being transformed in response to the mediatory role of digital technologies. Digital mediation has caused care to become an increasingly ...cross-border practice, and a more expansive construct, that destabilises the assumption of presence (“here”) and absence (“there”). Indeed, as the physical and digital merge into one integrated way of being in the world, they enable connectivity across geographical distance, but so too can they create emotional distance within situations of geographical proximity. These outcomes reflect the “digital void” within which caregivers, and society more generally, are implicated. Digital voids are created when individuals immerse themselves within, and become responsive to, digital networks of connectivity, distraction and representation that can implicate the beneficiaries of care, their family and friends, and themselves as well. We illustrate these ideas through an empirical analysis of Singaporean voluntourists, who are shown to actively reproduce digital voids when engaged in volunteer projects overseas. Specifically, we explore the space-times of the digital void, the representations of “care” in a digital world, and how (dis)connectivity can foreground the (un)doing of care.
In this study, the authors aim to unearth the factors influencing voluntourists' behaviors. A quantitative approach along with a field survey at three Malaysian east coast island destinations is ...used. The findings reveal that environmental concern and intrinsic motivation significantly trigger attitude and satisfaction, and that affective image and satisfaction are important contributors to building voluntourists' intention to sustain their motivation for volunteer activities. Satisfaction is demonstrated as a mediator within the proposed framework. Enriching the existing knowledge, this research helps the local government and voluntourism organizations to craft a better approach and policy to promote voluntourism across the globe.
Tourism has been viewed as a development pathway, with alternative tourisms such as volunteer tourism perceived as promising. However, critics have highlighted how white saviourism and Western ...ideologies of superiority may underpin both development agendas and activities like volunteer tourism. The COVID crisis has impacted both tourism and international development and calls for rethinking. This case study is situated at the intersections of tourism, development and humanitarianism. It charts the evolution of the Cambodian Children's Trust which emerged in 2007 from the co-founding of an orphanage by an Australian volunteer tourist and a local Khmer leader. Through a process of conscientisation, the orphanage has given way to a community development approach under the leadership of a 100 percent Khmer team in country, leaving footprints of empowering spaces rather than dependency structures. This article addresses the research question of how might we transform the paternalistic desire to "do good" found in both voluntourism and development into a practice of mutual solidarity? Illuminating issues of power and inequality in Western-led models, this article offers a framework for more just partnerships based on Freirian praxis: dialogue building critical consciousness, co-development of transformative praxis, capacity sharing and trust in the capabilities of the people.
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