Methodological Appendix

Summary

This book draws on several periods of research, including two periods of qualitative research carried out in Nepal in 2018 and 2020, whose primary aims were to explore the complexities of the industry, foregrounding the experiences and voices of young adults who have spent time in orphanages in Nepal. These concerns stemmed from my witnessing the emergence of Western discourses surrounding orphanage tourism and the omission of the voices of the residents themselves in recent theoretical and policy advancements. Modern slavery and child-trafficking frameworks have the potential to dominate orphanage tourism discourse, and the book has critiqued understandings that do not meaningfully engage with the group in question but are becoming paradigmatically entrenched.

Research on orphanage tourism in the Global South that fails to engage with local voices and context constitutes a manifestation of the ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano 2000; Mignolo 2007) characteristic of much Western intervention as discussed throughout this book. Western research in non-Western contexts has a problematic history of applying predatory, oppressive and pathologizing methods and analytical lenses (Sinclair 2003; Thambinathan and Kinsella 2021) and is inextricably bound up with legacies of colonial exploitation (Smith 2021). Postcolonial and decolonial epistemologies are needed to inform better empirical understandings and open what Couze Venn calls ‘critical spaces for new narratives of becoming and emancipation’ (Venn 2006, 1), which are critical to undoing Western material and discursive domination.

The research, therefore, adopted a decolonial epistemological approach, which centres on the experiences and worldviews of non-Western actors, in this instance, young Nepalis, and respects the cultural context of their lives (Thambinathan and Kinsella 2021). To those ends, I have illustrated the relevance of the social, cultural and economic context of orphanage tourism in Nepal and have tried to locate the narratives of former residents therein.

I adopted a critically reflexive approach to developing the research design based on a pilot study I undertook in Kathmandu in 2018, which led me to re-evaluate the methodological and ethical implications it raised alongside the empirical avenues it opened. Lessons learned from the pilot study included moving beyond simply recognizing my privileged position as a white Western researcher working in a southern tourism setting, and towards decentring myself from the research process as far as possible.