Volunteering through governments or government through volunteering? A new theoretical framework for understanding volunteer work as an instrument to integrate excluded individuals

In the paper introduced here, a new theoretical framework is developed to capture volunteering through governments against the background of recent social-political developments in modern welfare regimes. Based on the analytics of governmentality, the line of thought which is summarized in following paragraphs is developed. In the past decade, new developments in the field of volunteering have emerged which radically transform and extend the nature and context of volunteering: volunteering is increasingly becoming subject to intervention of ‘third parties’, among which government (institutions) [2,3,4]. As an answer to the widely held conviction of declining civic-mindedness and volunteerism due to increasing individualization, these macro level actors attempt to stimulate and facilitate volunteering by mobilizing volunteers and organizing their activities [2,3,4]. With specific regard to volunteering through governments, however, there seems to be more at stake than a mere stimulation and facilitation of volunteer work by governments as an answer to the decline in civic engagement and volunteerism. Next to the increasing promotion of volunteer work as a ‘valuable and desirable activity’ in order to remedy individualization, volunteering has also appeared as a key instrument in government policies towards social cohesion and social inclusion. In this expression of volunteering through governments, volunteer work becomes a vehicle to activate and empower various excluded groups [3]. When framed in current social-political tendencies, another picture of this particular kind of volunteering through governments comes to the fore. Since the end of the twentieth century, it is increasingly becoming clear that the architecture of modern welfare regimes is changing: alternative mentalities and modes of governing welfare are emerging [6,5,9,11]. This means that the way welfare is defined, and connected to this, the way welfare is delivered today, has undergone significant transformations [6,9]. Briefly worded, literature reports on a shift from welfarism to post-welfarism coming to expression through the emergence of a neoliberal governmentality [8,6,7]. This governmentality involves a problematization of the existing ‘regimes of commitment’, and an accordingly market-led economic, social and spatial restructuring of state capacities towards an extension of competitive forces and a ‘withdrawal’ of state intervention [5,6,7,1,8]. Regarding the latter, state functions are selectively transferred upwards, sideways and downwards [6,7]. At the local level, this shift is accompanied by ‘a double movement of autonomization and responsibilization’ of the community, resulting in ‘government through community’ [9,10,11]. Through political objectification and instrumentalization, then, communities are to be transformed into ethical communities which function through, and foster ‘affective citizenship’ [10,11,12]. Against this background, then, volunteering through governments seems to be aligned with the new technologies of governing the community: in volunteering through governments individual responsibility seems to be tied up with active solidarity in responsibilized communities [4,12]. Resulting from this, more than mere volunteering through governments, in which volunteering is stimulated as an answer to a decline in volunteerism and civic-mindedness, this new form of volunteering can be considered to be government through volunteering. In this view, volunteer work becomes a governmental technique for the ethical reconstruction of both the community and the excluded individual into self-responsible actors; a strategic assemblage of the community and the excluded, hereby transforming them into a substitute for a ‘withdrawing’ welfare state and the reduction in what formerly were considered to be public responsibilities. [1] Fyfe, N. (2005). Making space for ‘neocommunitarianism’? The third sector, state and civil society in the UK. Antipode, 37(3): 536-557. [2] Haski-Leventhal, D., Meijs, L.C.P.M., & Hustinx, L. (2009). The third-party model: enhancing volunteering through governments, corporations and educational institutes. Journal of Social Policy, 39(1): 139-158). [3] Hustinx, L. & Meijs, L. (2011). Re-embedding volunteering: in search of a new collective ground. Voluntary Sector Review, 2(1): 5-21. [4] Hustinx, L. (2010). Institutionally individualized volunteering: towards a late modern re-construction. Journal of Civil Society, 6(2): 165-179. [5] Ilcan, S. (2009). Privatizing responsibility: public sector reform under neoliberal government. Canadian Review of Sociology, 46(3): 207-234. [6] Jessop, B. (1999). The changing governance of welfare: recent trends in its primary functions, scale, and modes of coordination. Social Policy and Administration, 33(4): 348-359. [7] Jessop, B. (2002). Liberalism, neoliberalism, and urban governance: a state-theoretical perspective. Antipode, 34(3): 452-472. [8] Peck, J. & Tickell, A. (2002). Neoliberalizing space. Antipode, 34(3): 380-404. [9] Rose, N. (1996). The death of the social? Re-figuring the territory of government. Economy and Society, 25(3): 327-356 [10] Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: reframing political thought. New York: Camebridge University Press. [11] Rose, N. (2000). Community, citizenship, and the third way. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(9): 1395-1411. [12] Verhoeven, I., Verplanke, L., & Kampen, T. (2013). Affectief burgerschap in de verzorgingsstaat: over de nieuwe publieke moraal. In T. Kampen, I. Verhoeven, & L. Verplanke (red.), De affectieve burger: hoe de overheid verleidt en verplicht tot zorgzaamheid (pp. 11-23). Amsterdam: Van Gennep.

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