Coerced Volunteering: Provision of Frontline Social Services During Emergencies

ABSTRACT The study examines social service provision during emergencies, with the October 2023 war in Israel as a case study. Building on literature devoted to coping strategies adopted by frontline social service providers, which primarily addresses routine contexts, our research explores their adaptation during crises. Using qualitative methods, including 18 formal interviews and 50 informal conversations with social workers as main providers of social services and such secondary sources as news articles and TV reports, we investigated how social workers manage the widening gap between inadequate social policy and escalating public needs during a prolonged emergency. Data analysis, informed by constructivist grounded theory, revealed that social workers employed extensive volunteer practices as a core coping strategy, which evolved across three distinct phases of the crisis. We conceptualized these practices as ‘coerced volunteering’, a phenomenon whereby structural constraints and professional obligations oblige unpaid work. The study contributes to literature on public social service provision during emergencies vis‐à‐vis inadequacy of social policy. We discuss implications for policy and practice.