Altruism as Infrastructure: Volunteer Moderation in a Bangladeshi Higher Education Facebook Group

Abstract

Aspiring international students across Asian countries increasingly depend on commercial education agents to navigate scholarships, documentation, and visas. Alongside this commercial infrastructure, volunteer-run Facebook groups have emerged. Unpaid admins and moderators, often under their real identities, vet information, screen scams, and guide members through scholarships, visas, and departure logistics. We study one such Bangladeshi group, \textit{HigherStudyAbroad: Global Hub of Bangladeshis}, founded in 2010. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 17 volunteer admins and moderators, we found that altruism becomes an organizing logic. It shapes moderators' identities, sustains invisible labor, and grants the group legitimacy against paid agents, even amid new technologies such as AI that could reshape this work. Human judgment remains central to how moderators sustain trust. We discuss implications for HCI's understanding of volunteer labor and migration infrastructure, along with design implications for platforms that depend on unpaid, long-term contribution.