Aid worker salaries and meanings for motivation

Last week my blog post on motivations in aid work was published at the same time as the spotlight was once again shone on aid worker salaries and benefits disparities. The Guardian’s Secret Aid Worker piece which questioned why expats receive as much as three times more compensation for their work than their national counterparts, was followed by another Guardian article summarising what continues to be a polarised response from the aid worker community.

Some would argue that the discrepancies in compensation – with expats often entitled to regular R and R, flights home, housing and hardship allowances and the payment of school fees for their children – create divisions within the workplace and fail to recognise the distinctive expertise of national staff that should also be rewarded. Some expats are quick to defend the higher salaries and allowances afforded to them due to the sacrifices they make in moving from their home country, usually taking a drop in salary to do this sort of work, and often still having to cover housing, school or family costs back home.

This debate is an important one – you can add your voice to it in a survey posted via the Evil Genius site  – and is happening on a regular basis within aid organisations, although often in hushed tones. The very fact that there is this disparity, and sometimes glaringly so, is likely to create tensions between national and expat staff. I often wonder myself what it must feel like for Kenyans here to see their colleagues driving to their homes six kilometres away in their four wheel drives while the Kenyan staff queue for a matatu to take them on what can be a two hour journey across town to an area where rent is more affordable. Or what it feels like to know that as a Kenyan you are treated as a ‘national staff’ in a place like Somalia or South Sudan, and thus paid less and not protected by the same security procedures as the European and American aid workers doing the same job. I think Western expats should at the very least acknowledge these differences and how they feed into a neo-colonial narrative that assumes white people are more deserving of certain privileges because of their backgrounds, expertise and experience. The uncomfortable truth that even African expats are likely to be treated differently from their white counterparts is highlighted by Crewe and Fernando:

Is it an unreasonable jump to have argued that the expatriate versus national opposition is linked to white versus non-white? The correlation is far from exact. But when people from the South take jobs in Europe or America they are not considered ‘expatriates’. It is often taken for granted that ‘expatriates’ means Euro- American experts whereas expatriates from elsewhere are given a specific identity (the ‘Ghanaian consultant’ or ‘consultant from the South’). So the jump is more reasonable than it appears at first.

(Crewe and Fernando, The elephant in the room: racism in representation, relationships and rituals, Progress in Development Studies 6, 1, 2006; 51)

Putting this particular hot potato aside, I also think we should be reflecting on what role adequate compensation plays in doing our work well. I’m aware of some NGOs – both national and international – where there are very few benefits for expats and salaries are so low that although you may be able to afford a modest apartment in the country you’re working in, you certainly couldn’t afford to live anywhere back home. The thinking behind this a lot of the time is, ‘we hire people because of their dedication to the cause – a quality that loses legitimacy if rewarded with too much compensation’. The assumption is that a desirable income suggests motivations of self-interest that go against the noble intentions associated with aid work. For a young aid worker who is new to the industry this arrangement may seem morally correct; but realities and attitudes change once you consider how you’re going to pay for a flight home, or for rent or daily living when you get there. Your dedication to the cause eventually has to be weighed against building a future and a settled, financially secure life for yourself. And aid workers want and need this like anyone else does.

Aid work is now increasingly seen as a professional role like any other; it is not driven purely by altruistic values. In Kenya, it is in fact a fairly lucrative profession in many instances – for both nationals and expats. This is partly why so many will not leave their jobs, no matter how much they struggle with it or how mean their boss is – they do not want to let go of the benefits that come with it.

We should not therefore discount the possibility that aid workers stay in their jobs because of the income and benefits they receive; but we should also not assume that this completely undermines any suggestion that aid worker motivations are, or should be, moral or altruistic. Perhaps, as one study of Bangledeshi NGO workers suggests, these sorts of intentions should be rewarded if staff are to remain committed to what they do. This should apply none more so than to national aid workers. They are often operating in difficult, sometimes highly dangerous settings, and their close proximity to the communities they assist may bring specific challenges; for instance, they themselves may be exposed to the same health or security risks as these communities, or they may become a target of government surveillance or harassment. Yet these national aid workers rarely have the same privileges of R and R, evacuation, or being able to easily find a job in another country, as their expat counterparts. These distinctive circumstances demand greater recognition, and reward.

 

5 thoughts on “Aid worker salaries and meanings for motivation”

  1. Absolutely! That’s why I negotiated my salary down, and one of the reasons I left. It didn’t feel right, for various reasons. Neo-colonialism is spot on.

    …a settled, financially secure life for yourself. And aid workers want and need this like anyone else does.

    The project beneficiaries would like that too, but are unlikely to get it. Hence “Lords of Poverty”.

    Reply
    • True, although I think we need to be wary of sinking too far into denying ourselves what we need because of our guilt over what we’re unable to provide for others. This is a classic route to burnout for some people.

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      • I agree! It becomes an impossible mental trap. Like cognitive dissonance I guess? Certainly seems to have taken me to a place where I couldn’t go on.

        Interesting though, the link to ‘what we need VS what we want’ – it is really hard to be discerning about what we actually need these days when we exist in an environment where we are constantly being advertised to. I think it’s so important to be at peace with that, at whatever that looks like for you. We have to take care of our own mental and emotional health, before we can take care of others (otherwise you get…..burnout!)

        Reply
  2. Poor written and misinformed article. Having worked in both South Sudan and Somalia I can assure you Kenyans are not paid as national staff.

    Reply
    • Thank you, I value your feedback. I’m interested to know why you pick out that particular issue in a much larger piece to argue that it’s poorly written and misinformed. I base the claim on Kenyans not receiving the same benefits as other expat staff on what I’ve been told by some who have worked there; do you believe that all Kenyans working there are afforded the same treatment by their employer as their Western colleagues?

      Reply

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