ABSTRACT
Volunteer tourism has been the subject of much critical debate in tourism and development studies (e.g. Lyons et al. , 2012; McGehee & Andereck, 2009; Mostafanezhad & Hannam, 2014; Palacios, 2010; Raymond & Hall, 2008). And its dominant discourses, discussed in Chapter 6, may permit tourists to reduce and disdain local cultures. However, this is not to say that all volunteer work is necessarily problematic. In some cases, it seems, volunteer work does help raise participants’ awareness and shift perspectives in ways that can be said to contribute to their overall intercultural competence. However, where discourses of deficiency remain unchallenged, as in the excerpts cited in the previous chapter, intercultural competence likely suffers. I therefore ask: how do volunteer experiences contribute to making Spanish-language learners more, or less, interculturally competent?
