Activists and volunteers organising amid constraints: the key role of time
Abstract
Purpose
This article emphasises the role of constraints when humans establish organisations. Previous research explains organisations because of individuals’ motivations. Here, I answer the question regarding the role of constraints in organising/organisations. In this article, the studied individuals face various constraints and want to avoid being targeted. Consequently, they establish horizontal organisations. I discuss the role of time in organising.
Design/methodology/approach
This research builds on an ethnographical study of activists and volunteers at the border between France and Italy where migrants cross the border. The area is mountainous, and the police, the judiciary and the far-right impede the actions of the activists and volunteers.
Findings
I argue that activists and volunteers establish non-hierarchical organisations to circumvent potential obstacles. To achieve this, they dedicated a significant amount of time to facilitate the formation of these horizontal structures. This approach allows them to operate without a designated leader, thereby reducing the risk of being targeted by law enforcement, judicial system or far-right groups. As a result, they successfully welcomed migrants.
Originality/value
This article presents new results on how activists and volunteers organise to welcome migrants.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all interviewees and participants in data collection. I also thank my parents for allowing the use of their flat during fieldwork. A very warm thank to Fabienne Azzedine for supporting me when I did this. Thank you for your time and encouragements. I would like to thank Stéphanie Pryen and Yasmine Bouagga for being supportive. I would like to thank the participants of the conference around the work of David Graeber in Lyon in 2022, as, even though there is no trace of “Graeber” thinking anymore, the data were presented there. François-Xavier Schweyer gave quite some of his time to support my first steps in writing qualitative work and proposing revisions to this manuscript, thank you FX. I would like to thank the participant of the seminar of the Axe 1 of the Arènes research centre in Rennes who gave me thoughtful comments. A special thank you to Sami Zegnani and Alis Sopadzhiyan for being the reviewer and organising that seminar. I am truly grateful to the anonymous reviewers who have reviewed this article. I also thank the editor Harry Wels and Mike Rowe for giving me extra time and support to work on this topic, although it may, in the end, not be enough. A very warm thank to Lila Le Trividic Harrache for her encouragements on doing this and highlighting conferences where I could get useful comments. I thank Ehesp for providing financial assistance to transcribe the interviews. I also thank a proof-reading team at Editage for reviewing this article. The length of that acknowledgement is a proof that this article has had a long life so far and hopefully it will be of some use to either some activists or some researchers.
Citation
Combes, S. (2024), "Activists and volunteers organising amid constraints: the key role of time", Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-10-2022-0029
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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