This article presents an overview of the findings to date of the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) Project, a longitudinal study of 1,019 young, predominantly female and African American community college students who were surveyed a year before Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and then two to three times afterward. This study combines a multidisciplinary, multimethod approach to understanding the immediate and long‐term effects of the Katrina disaster on physical and mental health, economic and social functioning, and neighborhood attainment. I discuss what we can learn from the rare inclusion of predisaster data and our unusual ability to follow participants for years after the disaster. I argue that it is important to follow the recovery of individuals and communities as well as the recovery of the city, as these are often not the same, especially in Katrina where a large proportion of the city never returned.
In August 2005, rising waters from Hurricane Katrina compromised several of New Orleans’ levees, causing extensive flooding that, in the face of government inaction, resulted in the deaths of 1,400 people and a large‐scale evacuation of the city. As long‐term residents of the city evacuated, New Orleans witnessed an influx of new Latino/a immigrants who arrived to demolish irreparable structures, clear toxic debris, and rebuild. Disaster recovery work draws on construction and low‐skilled service sectors, which are already niches for undocumented Latino/a labour in the USA. Migration to disaster recovery sites is a potentially lucrative strategy for undocumented migrants, who use their mobility to seek better employment. By highlighting differences in gendered labour experiences in a neoliberal disaster‐recovery context, this study illustrates how migrant‐labour niches and a lack of reproductive support systems constrain opportunities and shape migrants’ mobility strategies. Through a perspective of constrained agency, it considers how migrants’ experiences differ according to gender as they negotiate labour and care possibilities. The constraints on migrant aspirations are explored through interview and survey data collected from 256 Latino/a migrants to post‐Katrina New Orleans who were working between 2006 and 2008. The paper argues that while disaster recovery sites create opportunity for some of the most vulnerable workers, gendered immigrant employment niches and the absence of reproductive support constrain women’s success.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10452586
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Area
- Volume:
- 53
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0004-0894
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 175-182
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
more » « less
-
more » « less
Summary We analyse decisions to reopen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina made by business establishments on major business thoroughfares in New Orleans by using a spatial probit methodology. Our approach allows for interdependence between decisions to reopen by one establishment and those of its neighbours. There is a large literature on the role that is played by spatial dependence in firm location decisions, and we find evidence of strong dependence in decisions by firms to reopen in the aftermath of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina. This interdependence has important statistical implications for how we analyse business recovery after disasters, as well as government aid programmes.
-
Only a limited number of studies have explored the effects of cumulative disaster exposure—defined here as multiple, acute onset, large-scale collective events that cause disruption for individuals, families, and entire communities. Research that is available indicates that children and adults who experience these potentially traumatic community-level events are at greater risk of a variety of negative health outcomes and ongoing secondary stressors throughout their life course. The present study draws on in-depth interviews with a qualitative subsample of nine mother-child pairs who were identified as both statistical and theoretical outliers in terms of their levels of disaster exposure through their participation in a larger, longitudinal Women and Their Children’s Health (WaTCH) project that was conducted following the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. During Wave 2 of the WaTCH study, mothers and their children were asked survey questions about previous exposure to and the impacts of the oil spill, hurricanes, and other disasters. This article presents the qualitative interview data collected from the subsample of children and mothers who both endorsed that they had experienced three or more disasters that had a major impact on the child and the household. We refer to these children as exposure outliers. The in-depth narratives of the four mother-child pairs who told stories of multiple pre-disaster stressors emerging from structural inequalities and health and financial problems, protracted and unstable displacements, and high levels of material and social losses illustrate how problems can pile up to slow or completely hinder individual and family disaster recovery. These four mother-child pairs were especially likely to have experienced devastating losses in Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which then led to an accumulation of disadvantage and ongoing cycles of loss and disruption. The stories of the remaining five mother-child pairs underscore how pre-disaster resources, post-disaster support, and institutional stabilizing forces can accelerate recovery even after multiple disaster exposures. This study offers insights about how families can begin to prepare for a future that is likely to be increasingly punctuated by more frequent and intense extreme weather events and other types of disaster.more » « less
-
more » « less
Abstract In the United Arab Emirates, the
kafala system binds migrant domestic workers to employment with one employer‐sponsor. While various studies have identified the labour conditions elicited by thekafala system, research has paid less attention to the forces that underpin workers' interest in accommodating the constraints of thekafala . This article examines the effects of two punitive legal mechanisms that discipline domestic workers to remain within thekafala : cancellation and illegalisation. To be cancelled means to have one's contract revoked by one's employer‐sponsor and consequently be forcibly deported; illegalisation is the consequence that migrants face if they choose to “abscond” from their sponsor‐employer without permission. By examining the punitive legal system in which thekafala system is embedded, this article contributes to understanding the legal mechanisms that discipline migrant domestic workers into servitude in the UAE. -
null (Ed.)Approximately 75% of farmworkers in the United States are Latino migrants, and about 50% of hired farmworkers do not have authorization to work in the United States. Farmworkers face numerous chemical, physical, and biological threats to their health. The adverse effects of these hazards may be amplified among Latino migrant farmworkers, who are concurrently exposed to various psychosocial stressors. Factors such as documentation status, potential lack of authorization to work in the United States, and language and cultural barriers may also prevent Latino migrants from accessing federal aid, legal assistance, and health programs. These environmental, occupational, and social hazards may further exacerbate existing health disparities among US Latinos. This population is also likely to be disproportionately impacted by emerging threats, including climate change and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Latino migrant farmworkers are essential to agriculture in the United States, and actions are needed to protect this vulnerable population.more » « less
