Exploring Volunteering for Refugees in the Netherlands
By Maikel Meijeren
It was in the early COVID-times that I applied for the PhD position which was called ‘Volunteering for refugees’. Back then, I was triggered by the word refugees, who got my interest and I found it good to see that volunteers reached out to them. Already in the first months of my PhD, my perspective changed: volunteering took my interest, and it was good to see that they reached out to refugees. That does not mean that I was no longer interested in the fate of refugees, which I still am. However, I started to realize that I found – and still find – it fascinating to see people devoting their time to (unknown) others in a highly individualized society. I am, therefore, grateful to study volunteering in my early-career PhD years.
Starting with an overview: Trends in volunteering in the Netherlands
So, with one year left, what have I exactly done so far? As said, the topic of my research is volunteering for refugees and this takes place in the Netherlands. We started with making an overview of Dutch civil society, to picture trends in volunteering – and other forms of civic involvement – between 2008 and 2020, with a special focus on humanitarian volunteering. In case of interest, the quantitative article can be found here. It is also great to mention ERNOP here, as Aleksandra Belina was so kind to develop a very informative and easy-to-read ERNOP Research Note about our work.
Who is involved in volunteering for refugees?
Our next research idea focused on the very sociological question of who volunteers for refugees, in terms of sociodemographic characteristics. The answer is that these volunteers are more likely to be women, older or already retired and higher educated. The, again, quantitative article can be found here. Luckily, in another ERNOP Research Note, Ksenija Fonovic was able to translate our message very well to a practitioners audience. In the meantime, and this underlines the relevance of the PhD topic, the Taliban had seized to power in Afghanistan, forcing people to flee who had worked for Western authorities in the country. The Netherlands evacuated around 1000 Afghani’s, and sheltered them only 3 kilometers from our campus (in Nijmegen). Suddenly, ‘the global became local’, and it led to an enormous volunteer energy in and around Nijmegen. For us, paradoxically, the misery created an opportunity, as it gave us the chance to perform focus groups and interviews with volunteers and some of their coordinators, asking them about their motivations to start volunteering for refugees. I consider this stage of my PhD as most insightful so far, because I was finally able to speak with the people that I study – the volunteers themselves. The qualitative article about the motivations for volunteering for refugees can be found here.
Inspiration from the conference and new collaborations
The start of the next paper coincided with the ERNOP Conference in Zagreb, my first in-person conference and it did not disappoint! I found it very inspiring to meet all these people who are fascinated by (aspects of) philanthropy, and people were very kind and helpful in sharing their thoughts and ideas for my paper. These insights truly kick-started the paper, which focused on what refugee aid organizations could do to retain their volunteers. This mixed-methods article is currently under review. Moreover, the conference allowed me to ask ERNOP member Rene Bekkers whether he was interested to collaborate in our subsequent article. Luckily, he was interested and this led to a very fruitful collaboration and a quantitative paper where we focused on the influence of life course transitions in the decision to start humanitarian volunteering. This manuscript has been submitted very recently!
Close to finish – the final year and what lies ahead?
What is left for the final year? Part of my dissertation disentangles why people start volunteering for refugees and how refugee aid organizations can retain volunteers. As a closing step, I would like to focus on reasons why refugee volunteers quitted their volunteering. In doing so, we can draw a rather comprehensive continuity/discontinuity picture which can be helpful for refugee aid organizations. After this, it is time to finish the dissertation!
Where there hardly any challenges then? Oh yes, there were and still are, but the reason is beautiful. In the last years, I became a father of two boys (born in 2021 and 2022). So, our house is more than once a chaos and nights were challenging sometimes. But, as my supervisors also say: “just keep breathing”. A good advice, because I have a dissertation to finish and I definitely want to continue with volunteering research after finishing my PhD.
Maikel Meijeren is a PhD candidate (2020-2025) at Radboud Social Cultural Research (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands). Supervised by Peer Scheepers, Marcel Lubbers and Naomi Ellemers, his PhD project focuses on volunteers who volunteer for refugees in the Netherlands. Next to his specific attention for humanitarian volunteering, his interests lie in volunteering in general and – more broadly – prosocial behavior.