Ambiguous Aims: English-language Voluntourism as Development

Abstract

English-language voluntourism is a practice whereby people from the Global North teach English in the Global South as an alternative form of travel and means of development assistance. As part of a larger, multisited ethnography, I investigate how in-service and former English-language voluntourism program participants frame short-term English language teaching as development. Findings suggest that the relations among volunteer tourism, English, and development remain largely unexamined. It is widely assumed that English is a commodity, a tool that can help individuals, and by consequence, states connect materially to the global economy. Yet, participants also speak in ways that conflate English language learning with cosmopolitanism, cultural change, and deeper forms of identity transformation. In that sense, English-language voluntourism’s development agenda is unclear, and akin to other forms of volunteer tourism, English-language voluntourism would benefit from moving away from development discourse and reframing its overall aims.

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