Freiwilliges Engagement als Hope Labour

Based on a Canadian case study, the article examines how voluntary work is being reconfigured in precarious labour markets. The author argues that like an internship, volunteering is increasingly construed as a form of hope labour, premised on the logic of investment. Hope labour promises that exposure and experience will possibly lead to regular employment in the future, but in fact it is currently used as a free resource by non-profit organisations and companies. In workshops for job seekers, experts reproduce a neoliberal logic through which the self is imagined as a portfolio or a bundle of skills that indexes one’s employability and which individuals should independently work on. The un- and underemployed, particularly immigrants, face difficulties accessing volunteer opportunities that develop appropriate skills and networks. Although volunteer positions do not necessarily lead to paid work, unpaid work is simultaneously about filling one’s curriculum vitae and chasing opportunity – prominent forms of neoliberal risk management in contingent and competitive labour markets.