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CC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Integrating International Development Volunteering With a Meaningful Career: Australian Development Volunteers in the Asia-Pacific
Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, Online First
2025
Abstract
This field study explores how career considerations intersect with other motives to inform the decision by skilled professionals to accept long-term international development volunteer positions. Analyzing pre-assignment interviews with 50 volunteers, we find strong interdependencies between volunteers’ careers and their altruistic objectives, with large numbers across different career stages seeking to use their volunteer experiences to curate careers that, variously, establish, recalibrate, advance, refresh, or extend their prosocial contributions beyond their volunteer assignment. We identify six volunteer profiles—that we label Launchers, Enhancers, Career Breakers, Transitioners, Imposed Transitioners, and Veterans—which are broadly aligned to career stage, and which present a nuanced perspective of the individual-altruism nexus in international volunteering. We advance modern career theories by showing how international volunteering experiences serve as pathways to bring greater career meaning while simultaneously introducing precarity and liminality that increase the already high opportunity costs of international development volunteering.
Details
- Title
- Integrating International Development Volunteering With a Meaningful Career: Australian Development Volunteers in the Asia-Pacific
- Authors/Creators
- Anthony Fee - University of Technology SydneyPeter Devereux - Murdoch University, School of Humanities, Arts and Social SciencesCliff Allum - University of Birmingham, United KingdomPhoebe Everingham - Macquarie University
- Publication Details
- Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, Online First
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Number of pages
- 30
- Identifiers
- 991005849488607891
- Copyright
- © The Author(s) 2025
- Murdoch Affiliation
- Murdoch University; School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
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