'How to feel safe': international students study migration

A variety of institutional and representational mechanisms are used in the construction of 'international students' and other 'migrants' or 'ethnic minorities' as two distinctive social categories. As part of these construction processes, the individuals affiliated with each group are located in different positions within the matrix of social power relations: they are granted with differential abilities to exercise their right to freedom of movement, and play different roles in the process of knowledge production. This article will explore how these processes occur in a specific context, through an autoethnographic account of the experiences of the author as an international student at the University of Amsterdam. This account suggests a thematic and methodological alternative to the safe position that the academic training as prospective migration scholars offers to students

Opening up the 'black box' of 'volunteering' : on hybridization and purification in volunteering research and promotion

The scholarly exploration of “volunteering” has mainly focused on identifying its antecedents or consequences, in order to facilitate the management and promotion of volunteering. In this dominant stream of research, the phenomenon of volunteering thus remains a “black box”—a taken-for-granted and fixed reality. The article sets out to open the black box of “volunteering” by not accepting it as a fixed, unproblematic object, but by exploring volunteering as a constructed phenomenon whose boundaries are managed and utilized by a variety of actors. To deconstruct volunteering, the article utilizes the Latourian notions of “hybridization” and “purification” as simultaneous and entangled mechanisms. We critically review the literature on “volunteering” and problematize the fundamental properties of the “pure” perception of “volunteering,” their hybridization and eventual purification. The article concludes by highlighting how the constant tension between hybridization and purification mechanisms is in fact what makes volunteering proliferate as a phenomenon that has an increasing public significance in contemporary society

The nonprofit case for corporate volunteering: a multi-level perspective

This article argues that the nonprofit case for corporate volunteering is complex, requiring a multi-level perspective on the outcomes for nonprofit organizations (NPOs). To develop this perspective, we adopted an inductive research approach, conducting 39 exploratory semi-structured interviews with NPO staff. We argue that NPO scholars and practitioners should disentangle individual and organizational-level outcomes resulting from interactions between corporate volunteers and NPO staff, as such micro-dynamics ultimately affect NPO services. Moreover, these outcomes are subject to conditions at the organizational level (e.g. involvement of intermediaries), as well as at the individual level (e.g. type of assignment). Our study highlights the complexity that should be considered when addressing the fundamental question of whether corporate volunteering contributes to the ability of NPOs to provide their services, and under what conditions. We therefore propose that corporate volunteer management within NPOs is inherently, albeit contingently, intertwined with the services that these organizations provide

Revisiting Solidarity: Developing Exit Strategies from a Post-Political Pandemic

The flourishing landscape of solidarity initiatives that emerged during the corona crisis became an object of consensual appreciation. Even critical thinkers overlooked the intensifying influence of neoliberal logics on this impressive grassroots awakening. Highlighting these logics could assist in freeing our quotidian solidarity activities from the attempts to neutralize its political potential