‘I was the weird one down there’. The intersecting experiences of Norwegian international sport for development and peace volunteers

Abstract

For more than two decades, Norway has been one of the leading actors in engaging international volunteers to sport for development and peace (SDP) organisations in the Global South. SDP is a priority area of Norwegian sports politics, mainly projected through the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF) where the international SDP volunteer (SDP-IV) scheme is central. Both local and international volunteers play a crucial role in SDP projects worldwide. To date, research on SDP-IVs has explored individual motivations, learning outcomes and experiences, and there is a body of critical literature examining SDP-IVs through the lenses of neo-liberalism, post-colonialism and critical race theory. Nevertheless, there is limited research addressing how SDP-IVs understand their roles as part of larger SDP policy structures. In response, and drawing on intersectional analysis, this paper explores how stories of gender, ethnicity and class intersect in Norwegian SDP-IV’s experiences of working in the Global South under the NIF’s SDP scheme. The study draws on empirical data from an online survey (N = 91) and two focus groups with former Norwegian SDP-IVs. The results suggest that SDP-IVs variously negotiate their roles and positions in local communities based on social categories. Stories of feeling different, finding comfort in other Norwegian SDP-IVs and negotiating power and privilege were recurrent in the data. It is also argued that by entering a system marked by ‘aid rhetoric’, the SDP-IVs may sustain uneven power relationships between the Global North and Global South. The paper draws attention to the need for critically informed SDP volunteer programme designs that better prepare SDP-IVs for work in Global South contexts.