Abstract:
This paper explores the ways in which participants in one form of volunteer tourism, English language voluntourism, or short-term, volunteer English language teaching, take issue with the oft-marketed claim that these programs constitute development in the Global South. While many participants in English language voluntourism programs do, indeed, view these programs as development, data reveals that these perspectives do not go uncontested. In this paper, I explore the ways in which participants in different English language voluntourism programs challenge the notion of short-term, English language teaching by uncredentialed volunteers as development. That is, although volunteer tourism at large may purport to be a practice in which people "volunteer in an organized way to undertake holidays that might involve aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society" (Wearing, 2001, p. 1), participants in these programs challenge such assertions. In addition to arguing that English language voluntourism programs often fall short in doing what they are supposed to do (i.e., teach English language skills), some program participants insist that development itself is a larger, even problematic, social formation that initiatives like English language voluntourism cannot begin to address. Although the voices of such "dissenting" volunteer tourism program participants are not frequently heard, I share them here to illustrate how even within hegemonic formations such as economically-driven development paradigms, in which many volunteer tourism programs operate, individual actors working within these same formations can articulate and open up spaces of resistance.
