The Worth of Their Work
The (In)visible Value of Refugee Volunteers in the Transnational Humanitarian Aid Sector
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2374638 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patricia Ward (0000-0002-6567-7392, Technische Universität Dresden, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 928-944 |
| Publication date | 2022-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Work Employment and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0950-0170 • E-ISSN: 1469-8722 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/09500170221082481 |
| OpenAlex | W4281737778 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 33 |
Scholarship on invisible work highlights how volunteers' labour is devalued and obfuscated because it is framed as something 'noneconomic'. This article shows how volunteers' labour is invisible and noneconomic when it is reframed as aid. Drawing upon a case of refugee volunteers in Jordan's humanitarian aid sector highlights how framing work as aid transforms their labour into objects they 'receive' and 'consume' as benefits because 'work' is understood as something they lack or need. Volunteers are therefore both workers and beneficiaries in relation to aid organisations. This ambiguous positioning distinguishes them and what they do in the workplace from 'work'. This case elaborates understandings of processes that delineate volunteer labour as invisible work in practice, and provides a starting point for further discussion on the relationship between invisible and insecure work. It also expands empirical knowledge on volunteering and invisible work within the Global South
Framing (construction · Humanitarian aid · Political science · Public relations · Refugee · Scholarship · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Volunteer work · Work (physics · Engineering · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Religion, Society, and Development · Workplace Spirituality and Leadership
The Thought of Work
The Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work
The Paradoxes of Aid Work
Expat, Local, and Refugee
My Brother's Keeper
Making Refugees Work? The Politics of Integrating Syrian Refugees into the Labor Market in Jordan
Does This Make Me Look Fat? Aesthetic Labor and Fat Talk as Emotional Labor in a Women's Plus-Size Clothing Store
African expatriates and race in the anthropology of humanitarianism
Toward a critical politics of precarity
Authority and Expertise
Refugees in the IT Sector
Shifting Boundaries and Interconnections
Invisible Work
Two cases of ethnography
Linguistic Capital and Inequality in Aid Relations
It's My Passion and Not Really Like Work
Digi-Housekeeping
Extending Conceptual Boundaries
Puzzling in Sociology
Theory Construction in Qualitative Research
Making the Intern Economy
More Than a 'Little Act of Kindness'? Towards a Typology of Volunteering as Unpaid Work
| Citations per year | 1.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |