The growing popularity of the 'gap year' and its celebration and derision in the media and popular press has obscured international volunteering's long and complex relationship to development. It has also shaped a focus on the youthful volunteer from the global North at the expense of individuals, organisations, communities and volunteers in the global South.

This is not another 'how to' guide, nor does it provide an either/or approach celebrating the 'good' volunteers do or condemning the 'harm' caused. Instead, it offers a critical exploration of the relationship between international volunteering and development, based on fieldwork in the UK, Latin America, South Africa and India. Baillie Smith and Laure critically explore where international volunteering has come from, the changing ways it is organized, its relationships to personal development, citizenship and poverty and its role in a rapidly changing world in which some traditional volunteering destinations are becoming 'rising powers'.