Exploring pathways and dynamics between volunteering, education, and work

• In Event: Volunteering in the Third Sector

Abstract

This paper contributes a theoretical and empirical understanding of the dynamic relationships between volunteering roles and roles and positions in (or outside) the labor market and educational system. In many European welfare states volunteering is seen as a potential steppingstone for young people or people in marginal labor market positions to gain skills and networks that can ease the transition to ordinary jobs or formal education. The empirical evidence for such transitional effects, though, is mixed (Petrovsky et al., 2017). Moreover, current research is dominated by either resource theory focusing on human and social capital as antecedents for volunteering (Musick and Wilson 2008), or theories focusing on motivations as psychological drivers for peoples’ volunteer behavior (Zhou and Muscente, 2022). Both types of theories assume a static rather than dynamic and processual nature of becoming involved in volunteering, and consequently lack a qualitative understanding of how resources and motivations are linked to volunteer careers and how resources and motivations impact volunteer roles differently over the life course.

In this paper, we research the role and position of volunteers in the broader context of peoples’ biographical life course, current life situations, and their roles and positions in or outside the labor market and educational system. Building on theories of role set (Wilson 2005), we contribute a better understanding of how roles of volunteering within the civic arena are linked to roles in other arenas, such as workplaces and educational institutions. Moreover, we contribute empirical knowledge on the transitions and pathways from volunteering to education and paid work – and pathways from education and formal work careers to volunteering.

We build our research on a rich dataset that includes both survey data of roughly 600 volunteers from a total sample of 52 Danish voluntary social organizations, and 70 in depth qualitative interviews with volunteers from a sample of 8 strategically selected organizations from the same population of organizations. Applying a mixed methods approach that combines statistical analysis with qualitative computer assisted analysis (Carlsen and Ralund, 2022; Ma et al., 2023) of the total body of interview text, we identify three different pathways:

“Pathways of learning” are typical for younger volunteers that actively foreground voluntary organizations as arenas where the volunteer role can strengthen skills and competences that match educational orientations. “Pathways of experience” are typical for volunteers with a longer work life career that seek out voluntary organizations as arenas where the volunteer role allow professional skills and competences achieved over the life course to be acted out. “Pathways of substitution” are typical for volunteers where sickness, health problems, or life crisis events have blocked opportunities in the ordinary labor market and voluntary organizations become places for rebuilding self-confidence and forming meaningful alternative activity roles instead of employment. Thus, we contribute important knowledge on how volunteering roles evolve in close interplay with roles and positions across societal arenas.

References

Carlsen, H. B., & Ralund, S. (2022). Computational grounded theory revisited: From computer-led to computer-assisted text analysis. Big Data & Society, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517221080146

Ma, J. et al. (2023). Computational Social Science for Nonprofit Studies: Developing a Toolbox and knowledge Base for the Field. Voluntas, 34: 52-63.

Musick, M. & J. Wilson (2008). Volunteers. A Social Profile. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

Petrovski, E., Dencker-Larsen S. & A. Holm (2017). The Effect of Volunteer Work on Employability: A Study with Danish Survey and Administrative Register Data. European Sociological Review, 33(3): 349-367

Zhou, S. and Muscente, K. K. (2022) Meta-analysis of Volunteer Motives Using the Volunteer Functions Inventory to Predict Volunteer Satisfaction, Commitment, and Behavior, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. doi:10.1177/08997640221129540

Wilson, J. (2005) Some Things Social Surveys Don’t Tell Us About Volunteering. In Omoto, A. M. (ed.) Processes of Community Change and Social Action. New York: Psychology Press. pp. 11-28.

Authors

• Lars Skov Henriksen, Aalborg University

• Elisabeth Lilleøre Holstein, Dept. of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University