Volunteering as international mobility: Recent evidence from a post-socialist country

ABSTRACT

Set against the backdrop of socio-economic and political developments in an Eastern European country – post-socialist Romania, a case in point – this paper explores the roles of volunteering as a type of international mobility, over the last two decades. By applying qualitative analysis, the study aims to shed light on new developments of Romanian international volunteering. It has the novel goal of explaining the benefits of international volunteering, as perceived by Romanian youth, and as compared to their initial expectations. The findings, supported by 17 in-depth interviews, prove that the main effects noticed by the great majority of Romanian respondents include “eye-opening” and “personal growth.” Also, most of the young interviewees have mentioned an increasing sense of altruism, the volunteering experience being generally perceived as a positive one, with benefits beyond the respondents’ initial expectations.

Acknowledgment

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the first annual conference of the Romanian Network for Migration Research ROMIG, Cluj-Napoca, 5–6 September 2017. The authors thank the participants for their comments. The authors also thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this issue for their very useful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The “[…]” means the exclusion of parts of the quotation, while “…” (no brackets) means a pause or a hesitation in the discourse.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported with funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under grant agreement No 649263.