THE SCALE, FORMS AND DISTRIBUTION OF VOLUNTEERING AMONGST REFUGEE YOUTH POPULATIONS IN UGANDA

We are excited to share the newest journal article, led by Dr Bianca Fadel and co-authored by the full RYVU team (Prof Matt Baillie Smith, Prof Sarah Mills, Daniel Rogerson, Dr Aarti Sahasranaman, Dr Moses Okech, Dr Robert Turyamureeba, Dr Cuthbert Tukundane, Dr Frank Ahimbisibwe, Dr Owen Boyle, and Prof Peter Kanyandago).  It was published open access in the Population, Space and Place academic journal.

This paper provides an important challenge to existing geographies of volunteering, expanding them through an account of volunteering amongst young refugees in Uganda, and how it articulates with social inequalities within and between the spaces and places where young refugees live. The paper analyses quantitative data from 3,053 young refugees surveyed on their volunteering experiences in rural and urban settings in Uganda. The data provides new evidence of who these volunteers are, beyond their refugee status, why, where and how they conduct their activities, and reveals how these are connected to livelihoods and community development.

Through this survey analysis, the paper argues for the need to establish grounded conceptualisations of volunteering that consider the scales, distribution, and various forms of volunteering within specific groups. In doing so, the paper offers a new framework for better understanding the relationships between volunteering and refugee lives through four interlocking factors: place, (im)mobility, income and gender. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for wider geographies of volunteering and research on refugee youth and displaced populations.

Click here to read and download the full open access article.