"In the volunteer the Union has identified a mascot to respond to crises of belonging, citizenship and democratic engagement. The designation of 2011 as the European Year of Volunteering represents the current high-water mark in a volunteer-praising project, echoed by "Big Society" sound-bites in the UK. However, volunteering-support policies cannot operate in isolation from questions of access, and are rendered rather hollow by the exclusion of volunteers from the protection from discrimination on suspect grounds such as sex, race, and disability. The failure to consider ways of "reconciling" work with volunteering, the disregard for volunteers in the framework of free movement provisions, and the persisting economic/nationality emphasis when identifying "real links" between EU migrants and host states, also point to superficial valuations of volunteers - as providing "free work" (drudges), as investors in a Union-determined agenda (dupes) and as image-boosters (do-gooders)"

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