Abstract
In this paper, we supplement existing scholarship on the interactional process within volunteering with one that focuses on how inequality between volunteer and recipient of help is handled and (re)produced through interactions within voluntary groups. We focus on how empowerment projects with different interactional styles produce different forms of (in)equality on an interactional level despite dealing with very similar structural inequalities. We define interactional inequality as taking place along four dimensions: role distribution, framing rights, competencies, and sacrifice. Drawing on two different empowerment projects in the refugee solidarity movement in Denmark, we show how these dimensions of inequalities play out in the interaction between volunteers and refugees. We identify two strategies for overcoming the initial inequality between refugee and volunteer, one based on mutuality and another based on collectivity. Lastly, we show how these strategies produce interactional inequalities of their own.
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Notes
This quote was translated from Danish by the authors.
This quote was translated from Danish by the authors.
Fieldnotes, TH meeting, Copenhagen, September 26, 2017.
This post was originally in English so it has not been translated with the exception of the two bracketed references to the Friendly People that, in the original, were in Danish.
This quote was translated from Danish by the authors.
Fieldnote, TH meeting, Copenhagen, September 26, 2017.
Fieldnote, TH meeting, Copenhagen, September 26, 2017.
Fieldnotes, TH meeting, Copenhagen, September 26, 2017.
Interview with a refugee, Southern Denmark, November 2016.
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Funding
Nicole Doerr’s research for this paper was made possible due to the European Union’s IPODI fellowship for the project Refugee women’s and LGBT refugees’ voices, protest, and intersectional coalitions on gender and migration in Germany and Denmark (Project acronym Translating Diversity, 2016–2018). Jonas Toubøl’s research for this paper was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation as part of the project entitled Mobilization in the era of social media: Introducing the decisive role of group level factors, Grant Number CF17-0199.
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Carlsen, H.B., Doerr, N. & Toubøl, J. Inequality in Interaction: Equalising the Helper–Recipient Relationship in the Refugee Solidarity Movement. Voluntas 33, 59–71 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00268-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00268-9