This article explores the practices through which an integrated coordination is achieved when a crisis occurs in a situation of multiple national and organizational borders. While the literature on coordination in extreme contexts generally stresses out the importance of integrating boundaries to collectively respond to a crisis, we still need to understand how this is possible when boundaries are multiple and ambiguous. Drawing on the notion of “boundary work”, i.e., how actors shape boundaries between organizations, we aim at unfolding the transboundary work practices that allow crisis coordination. Through a qualitative case study of the Mont-Blanc tunnel fire in 1999, we reveal three main practices of transboundary work: borders interlinking, borders endorsing and borders negotiating. Our findings contribute to the research on coordination, by explaining how actors from distinct borders paradoxically achieve integration by shaping a plurality of boundaries.
