Research on volunteering in France and around the world
Volunteering is one of the fundamental principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The Movement’s 15 million volunteers are its cornerstone, and its greatest source of inspiration and innovation.
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, like many other voluntary organizations around the world, nevertheless faces a number of challenges to its volunteer practices. Recent events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the crisis in Ukraine, have clearly highlighted some of the limits of current volunteering practices, and have brought some of the challenges of engagement back to the fore, notably the question of protecting the physical and mental health of volunteers in times of conflict and emergency, and the supervision of new forms of volunteering, particularly ‘spontaneous’ volunteers.
More broadly, these events have precipitated a process of change that has been underway for several years, taking the form of an increasingly younger volunteer population, looking for missions that are often shorter, more varied, more concrete, and increasingly digital and/or remote. Where, how and why do volunteers get involved today? How can we keep them motivated and committed to our actions? What new forms of volunteering are relevant for the 21st century?
What new forms of volunteering are relevant for the 21st century? These are some of the many questions the Movement is currently asking itself about its volunteer practices.
While it is essential for our network to support volunteers as effectively as possible, whether in terms of motivating them, retaining them or exploring new forms of volunteering suited to the 21st century, the French Red Cross Foundation is convinced that the answers to these questions can only emerge from the fruitful collaboration of practitioners and researchers.
That’s why the Foundation is offering this first introductory bibliographical guide to research on volunteering. It has been designed as a ‘gateway’ to this field of study: an indicative reading list that can introduce a neophyte/amateur audience to certain reflections on the status of ‘volunteers’, their profiles, characteristics and motivations, their management and new forms of volunteering. It has thus been specifically developed for a practitioner audience, with the aim of supporting the transition from theory to the implementation of research-based practices.
This research was initiated by the Red Cross Red Cressent Research Consortium (RC3), in collaboration with and with the financial support of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
To carry it out, the foundation called on the help of Dan Ferrand-Bechmann, sociologist and Honorary Professor (Université Paris 8), who has written a number of books on volunteering that have become benchmarks in the field, including L’écoute. Au cœur du métier bénévole, (Chronique sociale, 2020) and Le bénévolat. To the unknown volunteer! (Dalloz/Juris, 2014).
Biography
Dan Ferrand-Bechmann holds a doctorate in sociology from Nanterre University and a doctorate in literature with honors in sociology from IEP Paris. She worked for Bernard Kouchner’s Secretariat for Social Economy, then for the Secretariat for Humanitarian Action, and was seconded to the Ministry of National Solidarity to head studies on poverty. She has worked on the sociology of associations, volunteering and commitment, as well as urban sociology, and has published numerous articles and books on these issues. A field sociologist and activist, she has carried out evaluations of public programs in French overseas departments and territories, in many European countries and abroad, particularly in the United States. She is a former president of the Association française de sociologie. In 2023, she published Trouble dans le bénévolat (Chronique Sociale).