‘You're the one that I want’: differentiating between beneficiaries in voluntary organizations

Abstract

This paper examines differentiations between beneficiaries in voluntary organizations. Drawing on the writings of Ahmed and Bauman, the paper suggests that beneficiaries are socially constructed through efforts to assist them and according to complex and varied criteria that combine immediate ‘re-cognition’ of otherhood with attention to the ‘achievements’ of beneficiaries, i.e. how well beneficiaries narrate and perform their assimilability. Taking the case of language cafés as an example, the study suggests that differentiations between beneficiaries emerge not only according to essentialist criteria, but also according to how convincingly beneficiaries express optimism about the future, intention to contribute to local community, and willingness to shed their past, and how respectful of boundaries they appear in the eyes of selves. Relational, narrative, and ideological dimensions then complement essentialist criteria to influence if/how others are included, implying that identities of both selves and others need to be seen as relational and context dependent.