Volunteering as Othering: Understanding A Paradox of Social Distance, Obligation, and Reciprocity

Abstract

This article challenges the notion of border crossing through volunteer work, arguing that recent literature on volunteer/service learning tend to assume that difference between volunteers and the community they work in is a given. Based on interviews of volunteers in a college alternative spring break trip in March 2013, this article shows that such difference is socially constructed through the naming of certain work, but not others, as volunteer work. The common interview answer was that volunteer work is something done for people distant from oneself—when one helps family or friends, it is not called volunteer work. Focusing and closely analyzing interviews of three volunteers, this article argues that calling certain work volunteer work is an act of othering the people one is helping as strangers. Advocating acknowledgment of this aspect of labeling volunteer work and seeing the benefit of the work not in border crossing but in re-imagining connections with various individuals, this article discusses ways to overcome the othering aspect of volunteering.