Why Care? Volunteer work and the ethical demand among young Afghan-Danes
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Why care—and care for whom? This article examines how care through volunteer work is ascribed meaning by young Afghan-Danes in a context of various expectations and demands on them from family and peers in Denmark, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Focusing on volunteers in their 20 s, with varying roles of responsibility in volunteer associations in Denmark, we pay attention to different articulations of motivations to engage, and to volunteering trajectories. We discuss how young Afghan-Danes’ engagement is situated in a particular Danish tradition of volunteer work, and how both Denmark and Afghanistan figure prominently in the motivations for volunteering. The young people engage and invest here and there, drawing on ideas of universal humanity and Muslim caring for others in their volunteer efforts, and involvement in politics in Denmark. Young Afghan-Danes find it imperative to ‘give back’, and the care involved in this is primary, while an awareness of building network and bettering the CV exists simultaneously. It is suggested that volunteer work is popular among young Afghan-Danes due to Muslim ethics of care and a Danish tradition of democratic, free (volunteer) associations aligning well, as long as the young Afghan-Danish volunteers choose to downplay friction and contention, and foreground the commonalities between ethical sensibilities and demands in the traditions, they draw on. It is argued that this navigation of expectations and ideas of moral personhood from the Afghan and Danish sides is something they are particularly skilled at due to their specific position and ‘composite habitus’.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Contemporary Islam |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 169-186 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| ISSN | 1872-0218 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
The research which this article builds on has been generated by Karen Waltorp as part of the ARTlife research project 2017–2020, funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation, AUFF NOVA.
Funding Information:
Afghan Youth Association Denmark (AYAD) was established in 2009 and according to article 2 of the association’s resolution, the aim and purpose of AYAD is “Career and study counselling, cultural bridge-building and aid for those in need in Afghanistan” ( https://www.facebook.com/AYAD.DK ). The association From Street 2 School (FSTS) was founded in 2011 by a group of Afghan students at the University of Southern Denmark. With support from the Diaspora program (DiPS) led by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and Danish International Development Agency under the Foreign Ministry (Danida), they specifically target street children and poor children in Afghanistan and raise funds to secure that they gain access to education, create mobile libraries etc. FSTS’ stated mission is to help children in Afghanistan living on the street finish primary education or work-related training, and to mobilize Afghan-Danes and ethnic Danes alike towards this goal. Today the organization has around 300 members and is funding the education of approximately 124 children from different provinces in Afghanistan. Lately they have expanded their focus to the establishment of wells (14 in total) in Herat and Jalalabad where drinking water is scarce ( https://fsts.dk/om-os/ ). Take my Hand (TmH) was also founded in 2011 as a non-profit organization composed of ’young men and women across nationalities, cultures and religions’. TmH fundraise and carry out projects locally in Denmark and ‘from East Asia to West Africa” ( https://www.facebook.com/takemyhandofficial ). Their scope is global, which sets them apart from AYAD and FSTS that have an Afghan-Danish volunteer base and an explicit focus on Afghanistan.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.
- Afghanistan, Care, Composite habitus, Denmark, The ethical demand, Volunteer associations
Research areas
ID: 398562446