The Boundary-Work of Volunteering and the Value of Unwaged Work in the Dual Crisis of Care

Based on qualitative research into formal volunteering in semi-rural towns in the north-east and south-west of Germany, this article analyses the consequences of a turn to volunteering in the German welfare regime. The article explores the meaning and function of volunteering for volunteers, organisations and the welfare regime, and identifies a series of conflicting goals. While fiscal pressures and staff shortages may lead to an instrumental resort to volunteering, its value is repeatedly constituted by the fact that it is not waged or professionalised work. Individuals often seek out volunteering opportunities to (re)claim their autonomy or assert the value of care, in some cases to compensate for the frustrations of the neoliberal restructuring of care work. However, volunteers also provide components of caring squeezed out of waged care work due to this restructuring. Moreover, volunteers do not always substitute components of waged work, they also step in where previously there might have been a family member to help someone. The article discusses the value of practices of volunteering through the subjective interpretations of volunteers and coordinators to show how these conflicting goals provoke three types of boundary-work that define the remit of volunteering: (1) claims to volunteering as unique; (2) volunteering as compensatory activity; (3) the defence of volunteering through closure and resignification. The article suggests that volunteering in part stabilises a dual crisis of care, understood as a crisis of waged care work and of social reproduction, without offering a sustainable solution.