Global service learning (GSL) and the impact on host communities: Framing with postcolonial literature

• In Event: Round-Table Session 1
  In Round-table Session: Exploring Global Learning

Proposal

In this presentation, [AUTHOR] paints a broad picture of the landscape of internationalization of higher education (IoHE) in Canada for context. After providing a brief initial background about its structure and form, they will present an overview of various ways it manifests, in particular, Global Service Learning (GSL) and volunteer tourism.

In 2014, over 1.6 million volunteer tourists went abroad globally (Popham, 2015). Volunteer tourism centres on the idea that an individual can pay to do good by serving communities in need through development projects. The purpose of looking at this subject in particular is that while there is much research on the impact of these programs on student participants, and the organizations that facilitate them, there is very little existing research on the impact of volunteer tourism on the communities wherein student volunteers are based. [AUTHOR] will share the theoretical underpinnings of their research study, which will have occurred in fall/winter of 2017/2018.

Specifically, the author looks at the host community's perspectives on the effects of volunteer tourism in their community. Non-Western scholars express the need for research to be conducted through a methodological approach that places the voices of nationals and locals at the forefront (Lincoln, González y González, & Elsa, 2008). Heavily intertwined, the [AUTHOR’S] study seeks to take this approach, and theoretically framed this case study through a postcolonial lens.

Though voluntourists often claim that their intentions to serve are altruistic (i.e. based on personal growth, desire to help others, cross-cultural understanding, skills development) (Tiessen, 2012), postcolonial theory helps critique what is accepted as “normal” and explores the asymmetrical histories of domination across nations, races, communities, and people. Despite the criticism that comes along with voluntourism, it continues to grow rapidly (Hartman, Morris Paris, Blanche-Cohen, 2014). My study seeks to understand, from host communities’ perspectives, how they themselves view voluntourists “help” directed at them, the previously unknown “Others” (Said, 1978).

Postcolonialism has diverse and multiple meanings, which are sometimes shown to be at odds with one another (Andreotti et al., 2015). This is attributed to one’s own unique and varied experience therefore lending to the different understanding and embodiment of postcolonialism.

There is a temporal dimension to using a postcolonial framework in that “post” indicates something “occurring after”. Orthographically, the ‘post’ in the hyphenated “post-colonialism” refers only to the historical period after the territories and people that had once been colonized eventually became their ‘own’, but this understanding is “highly problematic” (Rizvi, Lingard, & Lavia, 2006, p. 251). While scholars like Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (1995) continue to use the hyphen, I explicitly use the unhyphenated ‘postcolonial(ism)’ as illuminated by D’haen (2005) and other ‘New Testament’ scholars to recognize that rather than simply “coming after the empire” (Boehmer, 1995, p. 3), colonialism is still being resisted in what Sium, Desair, and Ritskes (2012) call a continual “messy, dynamic, and contradictory process” (as cited in Andreotti et al., 2015, p. 22).

Observing this framing is the critical part of this presentation. Data sources will include community members, intermediary organizations, and voluntourists, all guided by the main question “How have the lives of individuals within a community been affected by the presence of volunteer tourists?”

At the time of this submission, data are not yet available but will be in early 2018. The main idea of the presentation is not to discuss the data per se but rather, to explore the theory framing the data. Through this framing, I hope to bring attention to the community perspective, illuminate another side of this often one-way dialogue, and to present information in a way that is accessible to the audience who can in turn take the information and relay it to others. With the growth of voluntourism, ongoing and critical reviews are needed to provide a comprehensive understanding of volunteer tourism and its effects on host communities (Sin, 2009).

My central aim to develop these deep insights into host communities’ perspectives relates particularly to the idea of learning from communities themselves and helping to better-inform the education community including but not limited to academics, GSL organizations, international departments in universities, and NGOs.

Author

• Vanessa Sperduti, Western University