Volontären, vem är hon och hur skapas hon? En studie om identitetsskapande av volontären inom volontärturismen.

Sammanfattning: This essay examines the growing phenomenon voluntourism, which means that vacations are combined with aid work. The study aims at investigating how the identity of the volunteer is constructed in marketing and information materials from companies that are involved in the volunteer industry and if this is to be understood as a result of postcolonial power. This is conducted through discourse theory inspired by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau. The theoretical framework is composed by postcolonial theory in general and postcolonial feminism in particular. The methodology and theory impose that identity is created relationally which means that by creating the identity of the volunteer, the identity of the person who receives help – the Other – is also created. My conclusions are that the volunteer is portrayed and created as superior the Other, he or she is portrayed as needed, educated, stable and active and the identity of the Other is the direct opposite. The study shows that the construction of identity in the marketing material bear traces of a postcolonial structure in which the West possess power over the Third World.