Citizenship and Voluntarism: A Meaningful Combination or the Basis for Exploitative Relationships?

The author starts from the observation that citizenship and voluntarism are contested terms with diverse meanings. They have also been appropriated by politicians of various persuasions and imbued with meanings associated with ‘feel good’ factors that emphasize serving in a community. Therefore, voluntarism has the potential to continue the exclusion of minority groups, marginalized individuals and collective groupings at the expense of their citizenship rights, particularly those identified by Hannah Arendt as the ‘right to have rights’ that have been endorsed through public policy but today are being undermined by the ‘age of austerity’ in publicly funded welfare states. Against the background of the political context of UK, and the public rhetoric on the ‘Big Society’, the author examines whether citizenship discourses allied with voluntarism support a meaningful endorsement of altruistic solidarity or whether they endorse exploitative relationships under the guise of meeting the public needs.