Cosmopolitan Heroes: reshaping international mobility and cosmo-ethic practices facing the infra-pandemic phase

This chapter aims to deepen volunteering and solidarity practices during the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of investigating the solidarity dimension of cosmopolitan socialisation (Cicchelli, 2018) by observing a particular typology of subjects: volunteers for development in third countries working abroad through Italian NGOs. More specifically, the research investigated how cosmopolitan solidarity practices impact on biographical paths of volunteers highlighting their biographical challenges and contradictions. In this way, it will be possible to observe if this unexpected social condition (the Covid-19 pandemic) impacts the biographies and personal life trajectories of volunteers for development by drawing data from a qualitative case study conducted with biographical interviews with international volunteers of 5 Italian NGOs working in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. The chapter is divided into two parts. First, we put cosmopolitan solidarity at the test of the pandemic highlighting how this concept can be a theoretical pivot through which operatively translate the inescapable necessity to re-think social processes sparked by the pandemic. After this, the framework of our research focusing on international volunteering for development through the analytical lens of cosmopolitan solidarity practices will be discussed. Data analysis will show how the global health emergency has affected the experience and biographical path of volunteers.