Long-term housing recovery among Mexican immigrants: How service providers navigate racialized anti-immigrant disaster recovery policies

Abstract

Disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity. Much of the current disaster literature adopts a social vulnerability perspective, which considers how political, social, and economic factors influence pre-disaster preparation and post-disaster recovery. Even with this focus, however, there remains a dearth of literature on immigrant populations and their long-term recovery trajectories. This paper applies a racial formation framework to a disaster context. I seek to show how service providers from community-based organizations (CBOs) navigate racialized anti-immigrant disaster recovery policies to help the Mexican immigrant community in Houston, Texas with their long-term housing recovery after Hurricane Harvey. I conducted semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations with service providers from CBOs located in Houston that serve this population with post-disaster housing. I argue that the disaster recovery system is comprised of racial structures and racialized anti-immigrant policies, passively and actively limiting the access to resources for the Mexican immigrant community. I found that to challenge the racial structures and racialized anti-immigrant policies of the disaster recovery system, service providers assist the community through direct assistance to Mexican immigrants excluded from other programs; collaboration with other organizations to combine limited resources; helping the community navigate racialized anti-immigrant bureaucracy; and building trust by embedding themselves in the victimized community. However, findings also show that these organizations face significant challenges in conducting their work. This research brings a much-needed theoretical expansion of race and racialization theories to disaster research.