VOULTOURISM. La pratica di volontariato internazionale estivo fra viaggio, esperienza di sè e incontro con l'Altro.

In the last twenty years, a growing number of associations has been developing projects on what has been called volunturism, a new type of tourist experience which combines the chance to travel abroad with that of getting involved in voluntary projects destinations as integrated experiences into the holiday one. The intent of voluntarism is twofold: first, it aims to positively impact the social, environmental and economic context of destination.. Second, it leads the volunteer tourist to develop alternative ways of knowledge-developing, consciousness-raising as well as active citizenship. This second point will be the focus of the current thesis. More specifically, my research work will focus on how volunteer tourists represent the practice, both in term of personal growth as well as means to promote cross-cultural understanding and dialogue. In order to investigate this issue, I conducted 29 in-depth interviews with volunteer tourists who have recently came back from their abroad experience. Then, and this is the core of my thesis, I have systematically organized the collected accounts in order to retrace the volunteer tourism experience recognizing its key aspects, and highlighting its weaknesses and strengths. In the analysis particular attention will be reserved to the representations given by volunteer tourists in regard of their self-representation, and on their account of otherness. As conclusions will suggest the capacity of voluntourism to foster cultural understanding and fight stereotypes is not undisputed, and does not have to be taken for granted. Moreover the role of altruism should be, if not downsized, at least further problematized.