Working and Suffering in “Aidland”. A Study on Meaning and Alienation in International Aid Work

Given its object, scope, and context of action, aid work is a working sector that “naturally” exposes employees to a significant emotional burden. Nevertheless, beyond this “inescapable” emotional charge, critical analysis has shown how working conditions typical of the sector (e.g. normalized overwork; absence of clear boundaries defining working time and spaces; frequent job insecurity – with the proper differentiation between “expatriate staff” and “local staff” statuses) exercise a decisive influence over the occurrence of widespread situations of work-related suffering, denouncing the normalization of what has been represented as a “burnout culture” that would characterize the sector as a whole. Instead, the issues of quality of work and work meaning in the field appear to be widely less thematized, although aid work could represent (again, with the proper differentiation between “expatriate” and “local” professionals) an exemplary case of a work sector charged with great expectations in terms of meaning. Based on empirical work involving several expatriate and local aid workers, this contribution aims to highlight how focusing on the issues of work quality and meaning could represent a significant analytical opportunity to give an account of different forms of work-related suffering in international aid work. To this end, the theories of alienation developed by the “fourth generation” of the Frankfurt School are proposed as valuable analytical tools. The perspective based on the fundamental concept of “relationship” (between the subject and himself, the subject and the world) proposed by these theories indeed provides an interpretative lens useful for studying the object of work considering jointly its dimensions of working conditions and meaning. Accordingly, it is argued that questioning the relationship between subjects and the world, mediated by work, promoted by the organizational arrangement of the sector, constitutes a fruitful starting point for critically observing work in international aid, and its diseases.