Motivations to do humanitarian work with immigrants: lessons from the US-Mexico border
SAGE has curated a collection of research to commemorate World Humanitarian Day
By Ricardo Gomez, Bryce Clayton Newell and Sara Vannini
The temperature in the Arizona desert is over 100 degrees F, and as we walk and drive around replenishing water caches meant to help migrants on the trails, we wonder what motivates these volunteers to leave the comfort of their home and go do this kind of volunteer work. It is scorching hot, and the volunteers rarely encounter or see the migrant they intend to help. Why do they do this?
We were researching how humanitarian organizations use information and technology to help their work, but the question about what drives them, what motivates them to do this work, kept coming back, so we started asking them. Why do you do this?
After collecting dozens of stories and testimonies, we set to place them in the context of broader studies in humanitarian work. This is a topic few people have studied, and we were drawn to suggest a typology that differentiates motivations for humanitarian work along two axes: religious or faith-based vs secular motivations, and virtue vs principles-based ethics. While some people clearly feel they are compelled to do something to help others for religious or faith-based reasons, frequently working with church or synagogue groups, others are driven by secular motivations such as reducing human suffering or promoting social justice. On the other hand, some volunteers are driven by a moral virtue to be of service to others, while others are motivated by principles such as protecting human rights or following the Ten Commandments.
These types of motivations helped us identify types of humanitarian actors who seek to strengthen an altruistic or empathic concern for others. We called them Do Gooder, Good Samaritan, Activist, and Missionary. At the same time, we realized not all volunteers are driven by altruism, but may exhibit more self-centered motivations. These, we learned, can also be grouped under the faith-based/secular axis, or under the moral virtue/principles ethics, resulting in a typology we called Humanitarian Tourist, Martyr, Militant, or Crusader.
This typology is useful to understand motivations, but not necessarily to predict the outcomes of their work. Every individual is unique, and their motivations are multiple. Motivations are sometimes contradictory, and they change over time. Nonetheless, framing the motivations for humanitarian action as part of the umbrella of empathic concern can help strengthen the work of humanitarian organizations, if they can understand what drives people to volunteer to work with them.
SAGE has curated a collection of research to commemorate World Humanitarian Day
Article details
Empathic Humanitarianism: Understanding the Motivations behind Humanitarian Work with Migrants at the US–Mexico Border
Ricardo Gomez, Bryce Clayton Newell, Sara Vannini
First Published January 20, 2020
DOI: 10.1177/2331502419900764
Journal on Migration and Human Security
About the authors
