Youth volunteering policy : the rise of governmentality

Young people are increasingly encouraged to volunteer, perhaps as a panacea to combat personal and social problems (Sheard, 1995). This paper will explore why volunteering policy has developed this instrumental tendency in recent history. It will analyse Michel Foucault’s theories of governmentality, and use these as a frame to consider the advances made in youth policy over the last half century, but with particular regard to volunteering policy in the last 15 years. Using governmentality as a tool of analysis, it will argue that volunteering policy has become a device to responsibilize younger generations; a method to improve the authority of the young over their own lives and their local areas, whilst moulding behaviour which brings about individual and collective wellbeing. It is also argued that this follows a natural progression of youth policies to tackle the ‘problem of youth’.