Collective Action in Crisis: Search and Rescue Operations in the Central Mediterranean Sea

This dissertation examines how collective action emerges, evolves, and sometimes erodes in creeping crises through a multi-level study of search and rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean Sea. While research has extensively documented responses to sudden emergencies, we know surprisingly little about collective organizing in the context of persistent challenges that resist clear definition and resolution. The Mediterranean migration crisis provides a revealing context for examining these dynamics, as it combines ongoing humanitarian challenges with acute emergencies that often exceed professional response capacity.
Through three complementary studies, I investigate collective action across different levels of analysis. Drawing on extensive archival data and field research, the first empirical study examines operational coordination between professional responders and spontaneous volunteers during rescue operations, revealing how authority work enables collective response under conditions of extreme urgency. The second empirical study analyses the evolution of competing frames around the migration crisis at critical junctures between 2011-2019, demonstrating how its ‘wicked’ characteristics create persistent barriers to frame convergence despite recognized urgency. Finally, the theoretical study develops new conceptual understanding of how corporate roles and responsibilities transform through the interaction between operational demands and institutional expectations in persistent crisis conditions.
These insights advance both theory and practice by revealing how collective action in creeping crises emerges through operational coordination, changes meaning through framing contests, and transforms as organizations adapt their roles over time. While grounded in the specific context of the Central Mediterranean Sea, the findings illuminate how stakeholders navigate persistent challenges that exceed any single actor’s capacity to address.