Transitions to religious adulthood: relational geographies of youth, religion and international volunteering

Abstract

This paper offers important insights into the contemporary nature of youth transitions and the ways in which religious affiliation and engagement with international volunteering influences and interplays with negotiations of the life course. Situated within interdisciplinary debates about youth transitions, as well as discussions about relational geographies of age, religion and voluntarism, we demonstrate the multiple relationalities that are at play as young religious international volunteers negotiate the transition to religious adulthood. We focus on religious, vocational and aged relationalities to explore how these are engaged with, and experienced by, young people 'over there' in Latin America and 'back home' in the UK. Additionally, we explore how these relationalities shape identities within and between religiosity, age (youth) and volunteering, and how these are (re)organised through networks, flows and mobilities. To do so, we draw on our analysis of the experiences of young volunteers who participated in faith-based international volunteering with an evangelical Christian organisation that sends teams of young people on short-term missions to Latin America. We draw on our analyses of two sets of interviews with 22 young volunteers, 14 of whom also completed a diary about their experiences, supplemented by four focus groups. Our analysis points to the ways in which the spatial emphasis of geographical engagements with youth transitions can be well informed through considerations of religion; a key challenge being how young volunteers renegotiate their sense of religious self on returning 'back home'. In addition, although our participants displayed some self-reflexivity about the social construction of age, they did not necessarily exhibit an understanding of the power underpinning their encounters with others. Finally, our findings open up possibilities for appreciating the diversity of volunteering experiences and the role that volunteer organisations have in shaping the expectations and aspirations of those who participate in their programmes.

Youth participation in ‘post‐secular’ times: young Muslim and Buddhist practitioners as religious citizens

“…To better understand these processes requires becoming attuned to particular religious vocabularies, or looking where they may currently be no vocabularies to describe participatory activity which is not quite ‘secular’ or devoid of religion, but religiously/spiritually informed. As Hopkins, Olson, Baillie Smith and Laurie (: 390) have suggested, it also invites a reorientation ‘away from a focus on the individual acquisition of skills’ through a linear and cumulative perception of religious practice or activities as leading to civic capacity, and towards the ‘multiple and perhaps alternative understandings of what it means to be an adult’ for religious youth, in the context of the fragmentation of pathways towards becoming an engaged and socially responsible citizen.…”

Unsettling geographies of volunteering and development

“…ENDNOTES 1 RES-451-26-0561, AH/G016461/1. 2 For more details of broader research findings see Hopkins et al (2015), Baillie Smith et al (2013).…”

“…Research is also focusing on citizenship, with Lorimer () addressing environmental citizenship and others examining different forms of cosmopolitanism (Baillie Smith, Laurie, Hopkins, & Olson, ; Craggs, ; Rovisco, ; Snee, ) and partnership (Baillie Smith & Laurie, ; Schech, Mundkur, Skelton, & Kothari, ). In these contexts, wide‐ranging scholarship has addressed how volunteers understand their experiences as part of a faith journey (Baillie Smith et al., ; Brickell, ; Hopkins, Baillie Smith, Laurie, & Olson, ) and/or as an expression of transnational solidarity (Henderson, ). Research has also explored how volunteers' practices link to geographies of care, responsibility, “lifestyle politics” and emotion as people aim to “do good” (e.g.…”

Effects of Short–Term Medical Mission Trips to Chiapas, Mexico, on the Religiosity of the Missionaries

“…A study of evangelical Christian adolescents from the United Kingdom participating in non-medical, short-term mission trips to Central and South America found that participants developed an increase in their ability to share their faith with others and a stronger sense of being close to God (Hopkins et al 2015). A different study of North American youth who participated in short-term mission trips found that they were also more likely to become civically engaged in volunteer work and political activity (Beyerlein et al 2011).…”