Umsonst und freiwillig?

This article focuses on the growing importance of volunteer work in core areas of social services and infrastructure – a development that is largely undisputed as a fact, while its analytical characterisation and evaluation diverge. More specifically, this development is analysed as a re-negotiation of the social between state, market and civil society, which implies a re-adjustment of the relationship between state and citizen. The article focuses on the consequences of this re-adjustment for the organisation of (voluntary) work, which is understood and analysed as informalisation. The thesis is that grey areas of work are currently emerging in the area of tension between voluntary and gainful employment, which has hardly been investigated empirically and which is deproblematised by the glorification of volunteers as everyday heroes. The article examines key (labour market and socio-political) drivers of informalisation and shows how and to what extent the widespread praise of engagement and current engagement policies contributes to the disappearance of emerging informalised fields of activity from critical labour research.