Bridging Divides or Reinforcing Distance? The Interplay of Individual and Organizational Factors in Shaping Volunteers’ Relationships with Criminalized Women
Abstract
Abstract As governments cut funding for social welfare programs and shift toward neoliberal, marketized alternatives, non-profits have taken on a large and growing role in the provision of services to marginalized people. This paper examines how volunteers approach their relationships with service users in non-profits, as well as the consequences of and explanations for variation in their approaches. This research explores these questions ethnographically within Canadian non-profits offering social services to criminalized women. This paper offers three interrelated contributions. The first is a typology of different volunteer approaches within the penal voluntary sector—constructing volunteers as bystanders, tourists, visitors, or apprentices in their relationships with criminalized women. The second highlights how some of these approaches entrench social distance and inequality, whereas others encourage greater proximity and equity between volunteers and criminalized women. The third demonstrates how variation in volunteers’ approaches is the product of a dynamic interplay of individual and organizational factors. Together, these findings provide new insights about the conditions under which volunteers can do “good” or “bad” within non-profits. These insights could enhance the quality of volunteer work, reduce the reproduction of inequalities, and support the operation of organizations delivering vital services to marginalized people.
Metadata is indexed. Open-access discovery has not completed for this record yet.
No local PDF is available.
GROBID Extracted text; discontinued.
This text is generated from TEI extraction for accessibility, search, and TTS. Formulas, tables, figures, page layout, and references may not perfectly match the original PDF.
No accessible text representation is available. The text extraction service has been discontinued for the time being. If you require this service, for accessibility or any other reason, please submit an issue/request on this page.
Metadata
Issues
No public issues have been filed for this DOI.
Submit an issue
Record history
| When | Event | Field | Old | New |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-18 19:37:53.011249+00:00 | identifier_assigned | DSEID | DSEID-000-3636197 |