Understanding the involvement/exclusion paradox in disaster volunteering from a field-theoretical perspective

In disasters, volunteers who have not been affiliated to official disaster response organisations are likely to enter the scene. Although such unofficial responders (UR) are increasingly recognised as a valuable resource in both research and practice, their full utilisation, integration, and cooperation with the official response (OR) is rare. Although researchers have increasingly examined the barriers and drivers of UR involvement, this “involvement/exclusion paradox”, coined by Harris et al. (2017), remains puzzling. Applying a field-theoretical perspective, this paper argues that disasters are critical moments in which the field itself is put under pressure at multiple focal points. For instance, UR who enter the scene and try to become involved jeopardize the field: they increase the number of involved agents, increase the competition over symbolic profit, and question the definition of proper disaster response. Taking a case-study of a mudslide disaster in the Austrian Alps, this paper examines the strategies by which OR tame pressure associated with UR. Three strategies were revealed: boundary definition, boundary defence, and boundary opening, which aim at establishing and upholding boundaries by increasing both their robustness and elasticity. The findings contribute to a theoretically underpinned understanding of UR involvement and encourage critical reflection on the relations between UR and OR by revealing tensions and latent conflicts.