Background
The variation in how volunteering is perceived and practised across different contexts is significant. Volunteering is often used as a term without further description, and it is assumed that everyone has a common understanding of what it entails. Previous studies at the centre have shown that there are different approaches to volunteering within various areas and contexts. This means that what volunteering is and what function is appropriate can vary between areas such as emergency preparedness, art and culture, and health and care. The role of volunteering can range from being part of the institutional identity to being a result of external demands and expectations. Different understandings of volunteering can create cross-pressure for organisations and volunteers (Segaard 2019, 2020, 2023; Segaard & Reymert 2022). It is therefore important to uncover these variations to understand how volunteering can be realised within different fields and institutions.
Studies in recent years have shown that the population increasingly prefers to engage in time-limited and activity-oriented efforts rather than long-term commitments and contributing to the administration and operation of volunteer organisations (Fladmo et al., 2018). At the same time, there is a trend where volunteering imposes greater demands related to competence and professionalism, and there are increasing external demands, for example, in connection with various grant regimes. Together, this contributes to a form of professionalisation of volunteering (Solstad & Sandvik, 2024). These are different trends that can create cross-pressure for volunteer organisations and the volunteers themselves. For the first time, this project will compare different fields to see if the professionalisation of volunteering manifests differently in various societal areas.
The subproject has two main research questions:
- How is volunteering understood within different institutional contexts and fields?
- What differences exist between fields related to professionalisation, formalisation, and the extent of administrative tasks, and what can explain these differences?
Project Approach
The project will investigate how volunteering is understood and practised within different institutional contexts. This involves analysing data from surveys on voluntary effort with time series from 1998 to 2023. An important dimension of the study is to track the development in what volunteers do, focusing on the distribution between administrative tasks and activity-oriented work.
Qualitatively, the project will use existing interview data from previous research at the centre, supplemented with some new data collection. The interviews include volunteer actors, representatives of organisations, and public bodies. This will provide insight into how demands and expectations for volunteering vary between fields such as art and culture, health, emergency preparedness, and sports, as well as variations in how volunteering is understood and the legitimate role of volunteering within the different fields.
