December 2, 2021

Mandated by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, International Volunteer Day (IVD) is annually commemorated on 5 December. The UN Volunteers programme organises a campaign each year to promote IVD, recognising the initiatives of volunteers and volunteering organisations. IVD also provides an opportunity to share new volunteering projects and garner support from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government authorities, and even the private sector. While promoting the importance of volunteering has led to the creation of various volunteering programmes, less traditional, and more debateable approaches to volunteering have also emerged.

Voluntourism, a form of tourism where vacationers partake in charity work while on holiday, has gained popularity in recent years. On social media platforms, voluntourists are often seen posting reflective anecdotes of their experiences, claiming to have undergone personal growth by helping the underprivileged. However, the language and images used in these posts are scrutinised in “‘Itching to make an impact’: constructing the mobile Singaporean voluntourist in Instagram travel narratives” (Social Semiotics, 2020) for reinforcing a socio-economic divide between the voluntourist and the host community.

In this article, Vincent Pak (doctoral student, NUS Department of English Language and Literature) and Associate Professor Mie Hiramoto (NUS Department of English Language and Literature) identify and problematise voluntourism as a tool that is used for personal advancement. They analyse Instagram posts of the Association Internationale des étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales (International Association of Students in Economic and Commercial Sciences) (AISEC) Global Volunteer (GV) program to detect linguistic patterns in captions, which reveal the desire of participants to attain a global identity by partaking in these efforts. Even AISEC’s trip and recruitment advertisements are seen utilising words and images that promote the idea of achieving global personhood by engaging with the underprivileged.

The authors emphasize that the ideology of global personhood perpetuated by voluntourism, through the choice of language and visuals in related posts, is congruent with Singapore’s aim of globalisation. These overlapping narratives suggest that the voluntourist experience is commodified by individuals to differentiate themselves from their peers in a nation that privileges a globalised identity. By dissecting the narratives employed in voluntourism-related social media posts, this study reveals that the prevalence of voluntourism in Singapore is prompted by the nation’s favourable perception of globalisation. It brings to question whether the voluntourist is truly altruistic or merely attempting to improve their employability.

Read the full article here.