Consuming Poverty: Volunteer Tourism in an Orphanage in Nepal

This paper is about volunteer tourism in orphanages, more specifically in Nepal. While well-known for its mountainous landscapes, this country is one of the most popular destinations for this activity where business and humanitarianism contract a paradoxical union that is illustrative of the neo-liberal time. The commoditization of orphanages has increasingly raised serious ethical concerns, especially about the use of children as a tourist attraction. We seek to contribute to a critical approach and join the debate on orphanage tourism. We shed the light on an implicit and fundamental manifestation of domination in orphanage tourism: the business of poverty. Our critical perspective, however, also targets the assumption that orphanage business and some use of children as attractions are necessarily negative and always represents a form of modern slavery. Through the case study of an orphanage in Nepal and the triangulation of various data, we demonstrate that ambivalent situations exist