Voluntariado y Estado: Las funciones ambivalentes del Nuevo Voluntariado

Abstract

The present manuscript discusses the existing relationship between the process of restructuration in western welfare states throughout the last twenty years, and the rise of the ‘new volunteering’ as an archetypal model of social participation (especially important in Spain during the nineties). This ‘successful’ pattern of participation is strongly linked to the provision of social services. In this sense, volunteering (most of the times forming part of the third sector) progressively appears as an alternative source for supplying services in the new model of welfare. This article analyses the ambivalent functions of social volunteering as a mechanism of social control of disadvantaged groups (simultaneously to its role as a tool for individualized social integration) beyond the conventional discourse on volunteering, whereas paying special attention to its functional ties with the State. Moreover, the present analysis points out how volunteering operates as a way of social legitimation. Finally, this study pays also attention to the development of the latest Spanish social policies on volunteering as policies of regulation, promotion and funding, which tend to conceptualize volunteering as a ‘simple’ resource in the implementation of social services.