The criticism of child sponsorship: A way to preoccupy the minds of academics or a concern for the future of development?

Sammanfattning: This research provides an overview of some of the frequently occurring themes in discussion of academic criticism toward child sponsorship with Swedish sponsorship staff. The study aims to provide a deeper understanding of child sponsorship, their purpose, and critique, than the one that can be draw from the existing literature which remains largely detached to the perspectives of the people on the ground. This thesis will work as a bridge between academia and civil society organisations in the discussion of child sponsorship programmes. This is an exploratory researched using the qualitative method of semi-structured and structured interviews with six different Swedish organisations that are currently working, or previously has worked, with child sponsorship. The study is informed by the most commonly occurring theories in the critical literature of child sponsorship: neo-colonialism, neoliberalism, and post-humanitarianism. The result of this study shows that organisations engaged more with the older critique of child sponsorship and less with the most modern stands of critique. How organisation engaged with the critique depend on their definitions of poverty. The greatest strength of child sponsorship, according to informants, is their ability to generate solidarity between people, something the literature does not address.