The politics of sensemaking: Framing contests in border control during the EU “migration crisis”

Abstract

Organizing an effective crisis response requires that actors collectively make sense of a situation by exchanging their interpretations and understandings. Current sensemaking studies predominantly adopt a short-term perspective on this process, focusing on how actors recognize and respond to deviant cues. This focus tends to obscure how organizational politics influences the sensemaking process. In this paper, we study how actors exert influence over sensemaking processes by analyzing how organizational members frame situations and challenge one another's understandings. Empirically, we focus on the response of Dutch Border Security Teams to the “migration crisis” at Chios, Greece, drawing from a 2-year multisite study consisting of two field visits and 47 interviews. Our analysis shows that organizational members used discursive, symbolic, and situated framing practices to influence one another's sensemaking. Based on these theoretical constructs, we are able to explain how frame hegemony emerged that entirely countered initial adaptive sensemaking at the frontline. We contribute to the sensemaking literature by theorizing the politics of sensemaking in turbulent environments.