P. 6 HORAS LECTIVAS/5 HORAS TUTORÍAS ECONOMÍA

If the narratives of personal transformation around volunteer tourism rely on particular framings of space, they also contain particular visions of ‘better’ young subjects catalysed by volunteer tourism. This section explores the multiple - yet parallel - ways in which these ideal young subjectivities are imagined. It draws primarily on quotations from adults speaking about their understandings of trips, expressions which capture the anticipatory hopes framing volunteer tourism, and shape young people’s adoption of the dominant discourses prior to travel.

Youth workers hope that volunteer tourism trips will produce aspirational, active and passionate subjects who will engage in the work of self-improvement. A strong discursive coherence cut across all the cases I encountered during research. The trips are seen as a ‘catalyst for transformation’ in young people’s lives. Young people are taken ‘out of their comfort zone’, and are ‘challenged’ as they ‘encounter’ people living in deep material poverty, ‘engage’ with them and ‘work hard’ on a tangible project which has a ‘positive impact’ and ‘makes a difference’. Through this, they gain a new ‘perspective’

on the wider world and their position in it, and learn skills associated with ‘teamwork, communication’ and ‘achieving positive goals’. The experience is a moving and fun

‘adventure’. They return with increased ‘self-esteem and confidence’, a sense of gratitude and realisation of the ‘opportunities’ available to them, and increased likelihood to

‘dream big’ about their futures, and become ‘young leaders’.

This discourse - with its emphasis on affective change and self-managed

development - fits well with critical analysis of ‘governmentality’: power as acting to guide and shape actions, internal states, ‘capacities of the self’, and skills for

continued self-government (Gagen, 2013). The normality - even banality - of hopes around volunteer tourism highlights they are not particular visions imposed by certain actors, but widely accepted norms situated in broader social trends:

particularly of the ‘psychologisation of the western subject’ where self-improvement is valued. Furthermore, ideas that ‘everybody has the power’ implicit in the feel-good language of ‘transformation’ can be analysed through critiques of ‘neoliberal’

politics, where messages that a ‘positive attitude’ and hard work creates success function to conceal the anxious pressures of individual responsibility amid privatisation and shrinking social safety nets (Peck, 2010). Other research argues that empathetic self-transformations are highly valued in the neoliberal

international development industry (Pedwell, 2012), and that volunteer tourism is a

‘technology of the self’ ‘through which subjects constitute themselves simultaneously as competitive, entrepreneurial, market-based, individualised actors and caring, responsible, active, global citizens’ (Sin et al., 2015: 122).

The discourses around volunteer tourism in my cases can thus be read as

‘neoliberal’, but if we are to avoid that term as an explanatory stopgap, the actually-existing forces at work deserve attention. An emphasis on developing ‘duty-bound, self-regulated’ ‘active citizens’ through a combination of strong moral discourses and adventurous activities pre-dates and exceeds ‘neoliberalism’ in terms of the recent era of rampant free-market capitalism that the term signals. (Mills, 2013:

120) This was particularly epitomised by a case beyond my main case studies, a sports volunteering trip to Zambia²⁶. The Zambia trip placed a strong emphasis on professionalism and self-discipline as an aim, and inculcated these through a

rigorously structured 18-month pre-trip programme. The monitoring of bodily roles and material practices played a major role in shaping ‘young leaders’ prior to the trip abroad:

George was the chairman and he was going to run the meetings, so I brought him a diary, and said, right, ‘you’ve got a diary, now you can bring this, with an agenda…’, and he’d come along and it was blank! (laughs) […]

the next week he brought it and actually had it open on the day… So we were starting to chip away at those... irregularities in… his regular work pattern.

(Nigel, Trustee, Volunteering Organisation)

26 This trip was run in partnership between two London youth charities, a youth sector umbrella organisation and a sport development charity. The trip was embedded in an18-month programme with a package of training: in youth work, public speaking and sports coaching, some accompanied by accreditation. Abroad, young people ran sports sessions in primary schools in Zambia,

culminating in a tournament, as well as engaging in some other volunteering and leisure activities.

Another youth worker on the project described the discipline and initiative they tried to foster in young people by focusing on the behavioural shift of turning up on time. The Zambia trip’s model thus resonated with longer-standing efforts at inculcating disciplined responsibility and tangible professional skills – such as scheduling and running meetings - found historically in informal and formal education. To a great extent my main case studies shared this vision of producing

‘young leaders’ who were ‘proactive’ in a context where ‘grades aren’t enough any more’ (Kassie, Youth Worker).

However, there were features of my main case studies more specifically

characteristic of ‘neoliberal’ dynamics, especially in the valorisation of aspiration and enterprise. Where the Zambia case encouraged a disciplined professionalism, the emphasis in both my main case studies was upon fostering a passionate, active and aspirational disposition. This emphasis can be seen in the way access to trips was hazily defined, especially in the Springboard case, around the idea of ‘getting involved’, a phrase I heard time and time again - and in effect, seemed to amount to a performance of enthusiasm. Fostering this enthusiastic, ‘positive’ disposition is both attuned to ‘neoliberal’ contexts and a form of classed discipline. For instance, in fundraising for the trips, young people were expected to engage in the labour of self-presentation - in presentations to local council funding bodies, asking for sponsorship, or making films about their hopes. This inculcation of the ability to

‘sell yourself’ is both a useful skill under flexible capitalism and embedded in a transformation of their classed modes of communication, the fact that ‘the estate has a particular language... but you take it into a work setting and that language isn’t appropriate…’ (Jason, Youth Worker).

The two main cases expressed different iterations of the overarching ideal of aspirational and self-improving subjects. Springboard trips upheld admiration of spectacular, enterprising form of aspiration, and the Kingsfield trip encouraged an active expression of young religiosity fused with self-development. The following two sections explore each of these visions in greater depth.

4.4.2. Conversion from Gangsters to Young Entrepreneurs through