Chapter 7 - Conclusions: Moving Beyond Saviourism

Summary

The central argument of this book is that orphanage tourism is adopted and co-opted into numerous campaigns and discourses in ways that partly, if not predominantly, serve the interests of intervenors by generating certain rewards: gaining power, status, repute, funding, identity and so on. Meanwhile, the subjectivities of youth involved are sidelined and overlooked. Chapters have presented a range of paradigms and contexts through which this argument is made. In that regard, the book contributes to a growing body of work that critiques interventions performed by the ‘rescue industry’ and international/ multinational interventions that can do more harm than good on account of poor understanding, little or no local consultation, dubious metrics and questionable goals and frameworks. As I have argued throughout, the urge to rescue ‘paper orphans’ by volunteers, INGOs or abolitionists chiefly rests on the blunt assumption that the Global South is needy of a saviour, and the Global North is well equipped to perform the task.

In this relationship, the saviour – whether voluntourist, humanitarian, academic, governmental or state – assumes the role of hero, or protagonist, in the story they narrate about themself and their own goals and achievements. The narrative relies on an object to pity, rescue and redeem, and the orphan child fulfils this role well because of historical and contemporary constructions of orphanhood, childhood vulnerability and the assumed sanctity of family life. The racialized dynamic of the orphan/rescuer relationship further enhances the imagined potential of the West to reform, rescue and restore the ‘Other’. This reproduction of victimhood connects to Teju Cole's notion of a ‘white saviour industrial complex’, which compels Westerners to have ‘a big emotional experience that validates privilege’ (Cole 2012, 1). According to Cole, ‘the white saviour supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon and receives awards in the evening’ (Ibid.). Cole's thesis was originally made in response to White hegemony in Western humanitarian aid, but the concept is applicable in other ways. Anderson, Knee and Mowatt argue that the idea of White hegemonic groups seeking ‘to do good while also satisfying their own emotional needs can also apply to leisure research and practice’ (2021, 531). They employ Cole's framework to identify the enactment of White saviourism in international volunteer tourism.