‘Struggling to Do the Right Thing’: challenges during international volunteering

Katharina Mangold

Third World Quarterly, 2012, vol. 33, issue 8, 1493-1509

Abstract: This article focuses on young adults from Germany who accomplish one year of voluntary service in various social projects in Uganda. The participants are between 18 and 28 years of age and most of them stay abroad for about 12 months. The study investigates conceptual approaches of experiences and asks for transnational experiences or experiences made in the context of transnationalism. Spaces, in which differences and conflicts can be bridged and negotiated, are meetings amongst the volunteers themselves as well as amongst volunteers and Ugandans, who then become ‘cultural agents'. The community therewith offers a save space of exchange, in which the volunteers do not feel obliged to constantly reflect on their actions, practices and behaviour. In sum, the empirical material shows the different reasons for the young adults to accomplish a year of voluntary service in Uganda. Challenges the volunteers face during their stay can be shown additionally. Doing this, I am developing the concept of ‘inconsistency of status' from the empirical material and also highlight the ways in which the volunteers are dealing with their ‘situations of ambivalence'. Last but not least this ambivalences will be discussed as ‘In-betweenness' and this ‘In-betweenness' as an opportunity.

Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2012.698137

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