Group styles and humanitarian aid: exploring how group boundaries shape the outcomes of medical mission trips in Jamaica

This paper questions how the dynamics of short-term medical groups affect their ability to engage with communities. Short-term medical groups consist of medical doctors and their teams of volunteers. They travel to other countries to provide a variety of medical procedures including eye exams, dental work, various surgeries, etc. These teams usually stay for a few days to a few weeks. I draw on nine months of collecting ethnographic field notes of the work of the US-based non-governmental organisations providing medical services in Jamaica. This paper asks: how do group boundaries shape their ability to connect with the Jamaican community? I question how the dynamics of these groups affect their engagement with the people they went to help. I draw on cultural analysis of groups to explain how boundaries are a product of group interactions and, consequently, explain a group’s ability to engage with others in a cross-cultural context. My findings show that the ways in which groups draw boundaries shape how likely they are to achieve their stated goals. The group boundaries shape the activities groups adopt and their relationship with local Jamaicans.