Citation

Oscarsson O. Disasters 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/disa.12506

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article explores how a social services unit in Sweden coped with the large influx of unaccompanied children during the 2015 refugee situation. Crisis management is approached using social practice theory to examine how everyday work practices and their constituent resources informed personnel's management of the chaotic situation. The research data consist of practice-based interviews with managerial personnel from social services and operational staff at homes for unaccompanied children, as well as manuals and printed routines. The analysis demonstrates that the staff coped with the challenges posed by the refugee situation by adopting competences, mobilizing meanings, and adapting material resources belonging to different practices of everyday work. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of studying crisis management from a practice-based perspective as a complement to framing crisis management as a static asset of organizations-governed by institutionalized practices-which has implications for defining what constitutes crisis management and who can become crisis managers. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Crisis management; Normalization; Refugee situation; Social practice theory; Social services