Ambivalence in Volunteer Tourism: Toward Decolonization

Volunteer tourism: Postcolonial critiques

Neo-colonialism, a term frequently deployed by academics and media when referring to volunteer tourism (Palacios, 2010), describes the contemporary effects that assign the Global South, which are developing ² and less wealthy nations often previously a colony, to a subsidiary position economically, socially, and culturally, in comparison with the West (Prasad, 1996; Sharp, 2009). Wealth in the West hinges upon exploitative trade and debt-servicing agreements with ex-colonies (Prasad, 1996), while Western values and worldviews maintain a privileged status (Sharp, 2009). Although formal, political colonialism no longer exists in most of the world, postcolonial scholars highlight power imbalances continuing to operate on economic and ideological levels between the West and the Rest (Varman, 2018).

Postcolonialism developed to give the formerly colonized and historically oppressed a voice by studying the discourses and rhetoric used against them in both historic and contemporary Western texts (Ashcroft et al., 2000; Said, 1989). Inherent to postcolonial theorists’ study of these communication forms is the broader critical theoretical perspective that language in the form of discourses can actively mold reality, variously empowering, regulating, or dominating certain groups in society (Said, 1989). Postcolonial theory is a framework for better understanding this complex relationship between the Global North and the Global South that continues to inscribe neo-colonial discourses of identity, race, modernity, and development (Ashcroft et al., 2000). While other postcolonial studies largely critiqued neo-colonial forms of oppression delivered through volunteer tourism in general terms, aligned with Kadomskaia et al.’s (2020) approach, we thematically reviewed and synthesized these prior works, and arrived at four distinct and inter-related neo-colonial discourses circulated by key volunteer tourism marketplace actors.

A discourse of Power Asymmetry underlies volunteer tourism encounters to begin with, due to the predominately North to South flow of aid, resulting in host communities in developing nations being “voluntoured” by dominating forces linked to their colonized past (McGehee, 2012). Homogeneous representations of host communities in volunteer tourism marketing materials maintain a discourse around the Global South’s economic, political, and social “backwardness” (Echtner & Prasad, 2003). Visual advertisements predominantly picture White volunteer tourists providing material, educational, or emotional gifts to locals, who are themselves rarely portrayed in a dominant or even neutral position in relation to volunteers (McGehee, 2012). Thus, a White savior complex portrayed as Western superiority within the volunteer tourism marketplace intensifies disparities of power.

Binary superiority–inferiority positions in volunteer tourism are further evident in reports that volunteer tourists gain more from the experience than their hosts (Vrasti, 2013). While volunteer tourists gain skills to enhance their careers, hosts can be left in a further weakened state due to a loss of culture and increased dependency on outside help (Pluim & Jorgenson, 2012). Volunteer tourism encounters are thereby inflected by histories of colonialism which continue to structure relationships between the Global North and the Global South through the discourse of Power Asymmetry (Spivak, 1988).

Despite relentless talk of “helping,” “changing lives,” or “making a difference” in promotional materials (Simpson, 2004), rarely do volunteer tourism providers ³ articulate a link between an identified need in a host community and the knowledge/skills or even time frame necessary to meet that need. Labeled the discourse of Making a Difference in this article, this marketing narrative is particularly concerning when most volunteer tourism programs are short-lived and involve simple tasks locals could complete (Callanan & Thomas, 2005). Yet as volunteer tourists work for free and provide payment for their volunteering opportunity, they often undercut local workers (Guttentag, 2009). Moreover, providers claim program fees that direct money toward destinations that would not normally profit from tourism are undermined due to the tourist gaze driving a consumer preference for taking part in programs located in rural locales of developing nations (Urry, 2002). Rapid increase in rural to urban migration in these countries means that humanitarian aid may be better served in urban locations (Keese, 2011).

The lack of prerequisite skills required to take part in volunteer tourism suggests skills can be substituted by appropriate levels of passion and desire in Western volunteer tourists, undermining the much-cited benefit of skills and knowledge transfer from volunteer tourists to their hosts (Guttentag, 2009). Even if skills and knowledge are transferred to locals, it is questionable how appropriate these Western-based techniques are to local contexts. Moreover, frequent turnover of volunteer tourists leads to various disruptions in poorly managed programs. In child-oriented projects, this can cause psychological harm to children as they become emotionally attached only to experience a loss a few weeks later (Tomazos & Butler, 2012). Despite these shortcomings, the notion that volunteer tourists make an impact is not questioned but stated as fact in volunteer tourism marketing materials through the discourse of Making a Difference (Simpson, 2004).

Inherent to the volunteer tourism marketplace is also the idea that developing countries cannot help themselves and are in need of aid from affluent Westerners to bring them out of poverty and toward progress—a discourse of Helplessness. This infantilizing discourse parallels British colonialists’ views when they imagined themselves as powerful adults who governed child-like races needing to be forced toward civilization and progress (Connell, 2007). The abundance of child care–oriented volunteer tourism projects reinforces these traditional colonial relationships of care.

Emphasis on children as the main recipients of volunteer tourism aid also leads to the establishment of a discourse of Sentimentality (Mostafanezhad, 2014) which frames volunteer tourism experiences through emotions and feelings such as love and happiness. While appearing harmless, 18th-century European writers used similar sentiments to mask tensions of inequality and violence in colonial encounters (Festa, 2006). By adopting a contemporary discourse of Sentimentality, volunteer tourism implicitly rejects collective action associated with traditional politics and instead privileges individual morality as key to political change (Mostafanezhad, 2014). The sentimental response to poverty and global inequality is further exacerbated by children positioned as the primary beneficiaries of aid, as they tend to evoke sympathy rather than active, political action (Mostafanezhad, 2014).

Host communities are frequently portrayed as “poor but happy” in marketing materials, a sentimental stereotype used to normalize and negotiate the poverty of locals, suggesting that host community members are adequately compensated for their poverty by emotional, spiritual, or community wealth (Crossley, 2012; Simpson, 2004). The discourse of Sentimentality works to mask power asymmetries in volunteer–host relations (Festa, 2006; Mostafanezhad, 2014), ensuring structural causes of poverty are overlooked and guilt is relieved. Therefore, the volunteer tourism marketplace is accused of absolving volunteers of any real responsibility or incentive to take action against poverty, instead encouraging them to come away from their experiences reflecting on their own lucky lifestyles and romanticizing the poverty encountered (Crossley, 2012; Simpson, 2004).

Taken collectively, we suggest that the neo-colonial discourses of Power Asymmetry, Making a Difference, Helplessness, and Sentimentality form a neo-colonial gaze that underscores the continued Othering ⁴ and exploitation of developing nations through subordination to the West, albeit in a less directly political manner. While our review of past volunteer tourism studies above points to how this neo-colonial gaze circulates through provider-generated marketing materials, we now briefly turn to prior works that have explored the consumer perspective.

Using the discourse of Power Asymmetry as an example, volunteer tourists have in the past been observed capturing images of local children dressed in shabby clothing, taking such scenes to be a key visualizer of an authentic trip to the Third World (Park, 2018). Volunteer tourists have also been caught using such encounters with poverty to differentiate between developing nations and the West (Simpson, 2004), as well as assigning derogative terminology remnant of colonial times, such as “lazy,” to describe locals seen on the street rather than at work (Sin, 2009). In our own recent work (Kadomskaia et al., 2020), we point out the ongoing effect of the neo-colonial gaze in structuring consumers’ visual representations of volunteer tourism on Instagram. Specifically, we find these consumer-generated images to be almost identical to the visual advertisements shared on the same platform by volunteer tourism providers, in terms of their reproduction of neo-colonially inflected discourses. However, in light of increasing public spotlight on the neo-colonial nature of volunteer tourism provided through mainstream media in recent years, perhaps it is timely to re-examine how recently returned volunteer tourists make sense of their time abroad.

Critical marketing studies and postcolonial theory

It is suggested that marketing theory is largely focused on aiding practitioners to “colonise the mind and the body of the consumer” (Dholakia, 2009, p. 828). Even within critical marketing scholarship, not enough attention has been afforded to exploring the extent to which consumer choices are conditioned by the cultural climate and societal structures that dominate present-day capitalist societies (Tadajewski, 2012). However, several scholars have explored the neo-colonial power relations that fuel global consumer culture. Among the first marketing work to consider postcolonial attitudes problematized the Orientalist discourse and colonial imagery weaved through tourism promotional materials of Hawaii and its pedagogical effect on Western tourists (Costa, 1998).

Beyond the tourism context, marketing scholars have been mainly concerned with how inhabitants of formerly colonized nations respond to features of neo-colonialism embedded in the contemporary global marketplace, with much of their work concentrating on postcolonial India. These researchers have identified local consumers’ desire to transcend their “Third World” identities and to be viewed as modern and developed, and more like their Western counterparts (Varman, 2018). Focusing on a Global South to Global North commodity flow, Varman (2017) also explored how curry (the label applied to a variety of dishes originating in the Indian subcontinent) achieved icon status in the West through neo-colonial transnational transactions that ultimately appropriate the culture of the Other.

Attention has also been paid to anti-colonial processes engaged in by locals in response to globalization. Varman and Belk (2009) identified an anti-consumption movement against Coca-Cola in India in response to the cultural imperialism associated with the marketing of the product, and in a departure from the closely examined postcolonial India context, Patterson and Brown (2007) determined Irish pubs to be postcolonial spaces of paradoxical resistance, highlighting how the Irish are not merely victims of British and American imperialism, but also their collaborators and a beneficiary.

However, omitted from the marketing literature is an analysis of heterogeneity in Western consumers’ responses to the hierarchical system of colonial binaries invoked by marketing materials and societal discourse. Notably, “voluntourists” are becoming more critically reflexive. For example, satirical Instagram account Barbie Savior, developed by two former volunteer tourists, presents a humorous critique of the neo-colonialism inherent in volunteer tourism and Western humanitarianism that has generated over 150,000 Instagram followers (Zane, 2016). By exploring recent consumer responses to the neo-colonialism embedded in volunteer tourism, this research aims to advance the emerging thread of postcolonial thought in marketing.

Study design

Adopting a critical theory approach, this research contextualizes the experiences of volunteer tourists in the historical, cultural, political, and social context of neo-colonialism (Echtner & Prasad, 2003; Varman, 2018). Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 returned Australian volunteer tourists, accessed through a mix of purposive and snowball sampling. The key criteria for sampling required that participants fit the definition of a volunteer tourist—an individual who had voluntarily traveled internationally for a period of less than a year to contribute time and labor to projects aiming to enhance host communities, for no monetary payment (Tomazos & Butler, 2012). Notably, the present research exclusively focused on international volunteer tourists, as the neo-colonial undertones of volunteer tourism encounters arise due to the predominantly North-to-South flow of volunteer tourists. In addition, the present research centered on the experiences of volunteer tourists who took part in community development–oriented programs, rather than those involved in environmental conservation work, as the latter offers limited insight into volunteer–host relations. To ensure the accuracy of experience recollection, interviews were sought from those who returned from their trips no longer than 2 years ago. Participants were recruited via Facebook, following leads established through testimonials left on volunteer tourism provider websites.

Interviews were used to gain an understanding of how volunteer tourists discursively construct stories and meanings from their experiences abroad and their encounters with host community members, and how prevalent neo-colonial discourses are in these post-trip reflections. Although the interview guide did not address the concept of neo-colonialism directly, the four discourses thematically derived through our earlier review of literature emerged naturally through participants’ responses and were the focus of later critical analysis.

Extending prior interview-based studies of volunteer tourists, participants were invited to share photographs taken while abroad. Travel photography itself is a sign of privilege and affluence, and with the advent of various social media platforms, visual consumption is paramount to apprehending the world and presenting one’s identity (Schroeder, 2005). A total of 40 photographs were shared by participants.

The combination of verbal language and nonverbal images accumulated through photo elicitation helped participants convey deeper and more varied internal representations or meanings assigned to their images (Zaltman & Coulter, 1995). This included insight into how consumers produced their images and the degree to which they reflected consumers’ actual experience and understanding of their time abroad (Pink, 2007). This methodological extension provides deeper insight on how volunteer tourists replicate or resist verbal and visual neo-colonial discourses in their constructed meanings of volunteer tourism, thus building on prior critical visual analysis of volunteer tourism images on Instagram (Kadomskaia et al., 2020).

Participant details

Participants were aged between 18 and 33 years and mostly women of European descent (Figure 1), corroborating demographic trends in past volunteer tourism studies (Mostafanezhad, 2014; Simpson, 2004). Just 20% of participants were part of the workforce at the time of interview, with the remainder current university students. Participants had traveled on one to two volunteer tourism programs, and most trips lasted under 4 weeks (Callanan & Thomas, 2005). Their volunteer tourism programs focused on construction, teaching, and child care activities.

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Figure 1.

Distribution of participants across consumer categories.

Analysis

A critical hermeneutic approach to intertextual analysis highlights how the language volunteer tourists use to express neo-colonial discourses in their personal meanings of volunteer tourism is socially and culturally inscribed (Thompson et al., 1994). Meaning-making iterated between existing postcolonial works and interview narratives, following a hermeneutical circle that recognizes the interplay between meanings handed down by cultural tradition and personalized individual meanings (Thompson et al., 1994).

Coding of interviews involved two key steps. First, within-case coding was completed for each individual interview (see Appendix 1 section for an example of this initial coding process), involving a process of opening coding, part-to-whole coding, and pattern coding (Ayres et al., 2003). Second, similarities and differences between each volunteer tourists’ involvement in constructing, promoting, and contesting the four neo-colonial discourses were identified through cross-case coding. Factors influencing patterns across cases emerged and participants were categorized into three different groups based on their responses to neo-colonialism in the volunteer tourism marketplace. This process of analyzing and comparing consumers’ data at a single-case and cross-case level also included the analysis of participants’ photographs following a critical visual analysis approach (Rose, 2001). While the first author completed all initial coding of interview transcripts, the interpretive process went through several iterations and involved all three researchers deliberating and negotiating to arrive at final codes.

Mirroring

Post-trip reflections of participants allocated to the Mirroring consumer group promote four discourses of neo-colonialism by emulating providers’ neo-colonial narratives. As analysis of their interviews strongly parallels findings of past interview-based studies involving volunteer tourists, we present in Table 1 key quotes and a photograph from just one Mirroring participant’s interview and forgo a detailed explanation of these findings.

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Table 1.

Key Insights from Selected Mirroring Participant.

Neo-colonial Discourse	Illustrative quotes from our participant Lauren
Power Asymmetry	Image 1: Photograph captured by Lauren during her volunteer tourism experience in Peru.
Making a Difference	“I knew I was going to help children and teach and I always loved kids and I just felt this would be awesome for me and knew I wouldn’t come back the same, I knew it would do something major for me.”
Helplessness	“I honestly hear people talking about a problem, that people like to label First World problems maybe, and I’d just be like in my head “do you know what, get a real problem.”
Sentimentality	“To see [local people] be so happy with nothing, it’s like, come on!” “Some of the parents would come and give you a flower or some treats or something like that, so that was really appreciative and yeah, just getting lots of cuddles from the orphans and them saying ‘thank you’.”

Akin to marketing materials, photographs that Mirroring participants captured abroad show themselves imparting material gifts to locals (Image 1) and maintaining the discourse of Power Asymmetry (McGehee, 2012). Despite heavy use of the language of Making a Difference, Mirroring participants neglected to articulate a link between how their volunteer tourism efforts lead to positive effects on host community development, but rather relayed a strong focus on the potential personal rewards of these experiences (Quote 1). Such responses echo the content of providers’ marketing materials, where the possible experience, adventure, and personal gains to the volunteer tourist form primary content, and information about host communities, their desires, and how these will be achieved receives less attention (Simpson, 2004).

Like providers, Mirroring consumers were found to engender the helplessness of host communities through their infantilizing gaze and colonial patterns of travel (Keese, 2011), as well as through post-trip reflections that implied only the Global South suffers from real poverty (Quote 2). Finally, Mirroring participants’ post-trip reflections mimic marketing content that depicts locals’ lifestyles as “poor but happy” (Quote 3), and they consistently measured their impact abroad through an apolitical lens (Quote 4), thus also echoing providers’ disregard for traditional economic measures of development (Conran, 2011; Simpson, 2004).

In summary, Mirroring participants’ post-trip reflections support the existence of a hermeneutic circle in the volunteer tourism marketplace (Urry, 2002), whereby volunteer tourists reproduce their own version of discourses absorbed through marketing materials. Yet, while past critical works on volunteer tourism frequently note consumers’ neo-colonial attitudes and behaviors (Crossley, 2012; Park, 2018), only five participants exhibited the Mirroring category.

Oscillating

Approximately half of all participants were classified within the second consumer position, Oscillating. These participants resisted some neo-colonial notions found in the marketplace while equally embracing others; their reflexivity over neo-colonialism in the marketplace wavered both across and within the four neo-colonial discourses.

Oscillating participants frequently challenged the discourse of Power Asymmetry by problematizing widespread stereotypes Othering developing nations:

Throughout the media, when you hear of India, it’s either, it’s a really spiritual place, or it’s really, really poor. . . sort of backwards place. What I noticed was all the kids, the kids in Australia, and the kids over there, they all played basically the same. . . I’m like wow, these are just normal kids. (Nate)

Yet they failed to recognize how their own post-trip reflections constructed the notion of Western superiority. For example, failing to learn the names of locals negates the significance of their culture and identities, and denies their personhood (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012):

Then trying to pronounce their names correctly for like five days, and then you’re leaving. (Nate)

They frequently acknowledged the limited, temporary, or even negative impact of their volunteer tourism activities, thereby challenging the discourse of Making a Difference to a degree:

It was pretty heartbreaking just seeing like nothing’s changed, but it probably emphasised that it’s more important to explain to people why it’s not okay [rather] than actually just doing it, because that’s more like just a band-aid, and it’s not going to actually do anything. (Nate)

However, they repeatedly tried to justify or gloss over these shortcomings as a way of coping with the consumer ambivalence (Otnes et al., 1997) arising from this interplay of their unmet internal expectations of Making a Difference and the external realities of their volunteer tourism experiences. These justifications took the form of prevalent humanitarian tropes that highlight the modest standards the West sets for international aid in the Global South (Burman, 1994):

It’s better than to not have done anything at all. (Nate)

All Oscillating participants promoted the discourse of Helplessness as they only took part in colonial patterns of travel. However, several participants challenged this discourse to a degree, by considering host community members in more empowering terms in relation to trying to improve their job prospects:

Especially the translators. They just want to improve their English and as much as they work full-time, they still study full-time just to improve their English in the chance of hoping to get a better job cos they can speak English better. (Tim)

Finally, just 2 out of 13 Oscillating participants appeared to problematize the discourse of Sentimentality by questioning the sentimental framing of Global South poverty in volunteer tourism marketing materials and popular media:

We often spoke about how children are often used to tug at the heartstrings and there’s the picture of the child with like his ribs everywhere and his big head, and it’s like “oh my god,” you know? We sort of spoke about, is that really ethical. (Millie)

However, like the rest of this consumer category, they repeatedly expressed a highly apolitical and romanticized view of poverty alleviation:

It just shows you how life doesn’t have to be stressful and horrible, and you don’t have to be mean to people, you can be just happy even if you have five dollars a day. (Millie)

Moreover, when Millie shared her Facebook profile picture during the interview, she defended the sentimental visual representation (Image 2):

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Image 2.

Millie holding two local children during volunteer tourism experience in Cambodia.

Yeah like this photo, that was sort of right at the end. I mean two weeks isn’t very long and it’s potentially not long enough, but then do you want the children to really bond with you and then just leave? Or is it better that they have people that will play with them and then they leave and you know, they’re just used to having people coming and going?

Millie ultimately pacified these concerns about the potential dangers of sentimental encounters between volunteer tourists and small children by focusing on how forming a close bond with the children in her photograph made her “pretty happy.”

Thus, Oscillating consumers moved back and forth between embracing and problematizing the neo-colonial nature of the volunteer tourism marketplace. Despite most Oscillating participants having acknowledged either the limited or potentially harmful impacts of their activities, the majority attempted to justify such negative outcomes, with many indicating intentions for future “voluntouring.”

Questioning

The Questioning consumer position accounts for seven participants whose post-trip reflections contain critical considerations of neo-colonialism embedded in their own activities abroad and in the broader volunteer tourism marketplace. Although still embracing some features of the neo-colonial discourses promoted by providers and at times attempting to justify their marginalizing effects on host communities, self-reflexive and alternative views to neo-colonialism were more prevalent in their post-trip reflections.

Questioning participants problematized Power Asymmetries in the volunteer tourism marketplace, indicating a heightened awareness of neo-colonialism and its inequalities. For instance, Ellie rejects the White savior label:

I copped a bit from people who said that I was contributing to this white supremacy complex. . . I wasn’t defensive and like, “I’m saving the world.” I never thought of it like that. And a lot of people did push that, sort of, angel image on me.

Ellie critically engages with the colonial past and suggests that the White savior label is unmerited. Although providers’ marketing narratives elide information about the West’s complicity in creating and maintaining inequality in the Global South (Simpson, 2004), Ellie demonstrates an awareness of this complicity, explaining “we created poverty and now we get to be the ones who sweep in and save the day.” In addition, Ellie deconstructed the excitement of local children when in the presence of Western volunteer tourists as a potential sign of internalized colonial mentality:

The kids were so excited. And that’s probably a nice thing, but also, obviously, plays to that white saviour thing.

Despite strongly opposing and problematizing the White savior narrative, it is visually reproduced through the following image she shared during the interview, which pictures herself with a girl who she eventually sponsored to attend school (Image 3).

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Image 3.

Ellie pictured with local child during volunteer tourism experience in Tanzania.

Ellie did appear somewhat conflicted about posting this alongside other images from her trip, justifying as follows:

The photos that I posted from my experience, genuinely—and I don’t even mean this as an excuse—I just posted photos on Facebook because it’s an archive for me, to save my photos while I’m away and just keep them in a safe place where I know they’re not going to get lost.

Once back home, Ellie was asked by locals to find a sponsor for another child. Although posting about this opportunity on Facebook, Ellie disavowed the role of White savior:

I didn’t put a photo, I just said if anyone is interested in sponsoring, please contact me. And I made it really clear on Facebook that it isn’t something that you do for the glory.

These post-trip reflections highlight Ellie’s self-disciplining efforts and self-reflexivity regarding visual neo-colonial representational practices.

Questioning participants challenged naïve notions of Making a Difference by attempting to volunteer in projects they genuinely believed addressed structural causes of poverty, such as local government deficiencies:

[I] was working directly with refugees that were coming in. . . It’s a political movement which is happening where a lot of people are going into Greece to try to provide services for refugees which they believe that the government’s not providing. (Chris)

The association between English and development is often expressed as irrefutable in volunteer tourism marketing materials, yet details of how development goals are achieved through English language programs are rarely provided (Jakubiak, 2016). In contrast, Chris’ post-trip reflections regarding his volunteering experience in Iran suggest both he and locals attempted to better understand global links resulting in uneven development:

I guess the perception of the country being like a really radical place, but it wasn’t my experience at all. People were really conscious in trying to gain an understanding about the Western world and really wanting to use English as a basis point for doing that.

Scholars argue that volunteer tourism can only make a difference to global inequality if such activist alliance principles are at the forefront of “helping” agendas (Jakubiak, 2016). This is because building such alliances promotes a social justice orientation and therefore attention to political issues rather than helping individual people. Furthermore, having an activist alliance orientation foregrounds how people are dehumanized by injustices (Jakubiak, 2016), as alluded to by Chris. Several other Questioning participants revealed social justice–oriented motives for volunteering abroad, linked to alliance building between the North and South:

I study Chinese, so I know that the government in China don’t particularly fund the special needs programmes in China very well. I know that there was a genuine need there for someone like that. (Amy)

I like advocating and I don’t mind telling people about my experiences and that’s one of the reasons why I went. (Claire)

In addition to more careful consideration of the types of volunteer tourism programs they participated in, several Questioning participants also volunteered for longer compared with participants in other consumer categories. Despite genuine efforts to positively contribute to host communities in a sustainable manner, Questioning participants critically reflected that at its current state, volunteer tourism is largely incapable of making a difference to the structural causes of poverty in the Global South and therefore appeared hesitant about their future participation in the marketplace. This critical reflexivity is demonstrated by Maxine, who although expressing that she was “really glad that I did three months over [at the day care]” acknowledged that even long-term experiences like her own “can’t fix everything.” Maxine further stated,

I’m not in any rush to go over there and do what I did again. . . I think I can make a more meaningful contribution just continuing to support this one family.

Here, Maxine refers to the family of the local boy whom she now sponsors to attend school.

Resisting the discourse of Helplessness, three Questioning participants had volunteered within developed nations. Moreover, others who volunteered in the Global South acknowledged the need to provide aid within developed nations:

I looked into volunteer programs in Australia as well, and it’s like always during work hours. (Maxine)

Thus, Questioning participants contradict the findings of past volunteer tourism studies, which identified volunteer tourists as unwilling to accept that poverty, as they had witnessed in developing countries, exists in the West (Freidus, 2017; Simpson, 2004).

Although several Oscillating participants framed locals through positive characteristics such as “hard-working” or “helpful,” only Questioning participants directly acknowledged the existence of host community produced poverty-alleviating initiatives outside of volunteer tourism:

There’s things in [Tanzania] that need help and developing. But they’re working on it and they have locals there and not just people who come in from elsewhere to help. . . They’re growing and they’re doing their own thing. Maybe having volunteers and people who want to help and want to give helps to propel that. (Ellie)

The quote above also counters the volunteer tourism discourse that portrays Africa as the ultimate site of helplessness (Park, 2018).

Questioning participants’ more nuanced and politically driven understanding of poverty meant the discourse of Sentimentality was evidenced far less in their post-trip reflections. Just one Questioning participant reproduced the “poor but happy” stereotype. Instead, Questioning participants tended to label the shortcomings they observed in host destinations as “unjust inequalities” and called into question the chains of disparities between wealthy and less wealthy nations:

From what I’ve seen I can question what the World Health Organisation does, because their health equipment, like there was nothing there. For example, when you do an ultrasound on a pregnant woman here you have all this equipment to do all of that, but over [in Cambodia] they were using stuff that was 20 years old. (Claire)

In summary, Questioning participants were the most critically reflexive group. They problematized neo-colonial power relations in their encounters with locals, as well within the marketplace more broadly and had the most minimal role in reproducing the four neo-colonial discourses. As no Questioning participant expressed strong intentions to participate in future volunteer tourism, this also highlights their heightened understanding of the shortcomings of the marketplace. However, given that they still reproduced some features of neo-colonial discourses at times, it cannot be said that any consumer involved in this research demonstrated a truly Decolonized Gaze—a gaze which may enable consumers from the Global North to more ethically intervene in communities outside of their homeland (Tiessen & Huish, 2014).