Resilience in Louisiana FEMA Parks: A Person-Centered, Fuzzy-Set Analysis

Abstract

Despite living in difficult and socially disorganized conditions, some individuals displaced by disasters and living in FEMA parks can be remarkably resilient to depression. We conceptualize resilience as emerging from a combination of situational advantages that accrue for some residents but not for others. We assess whether situational advantages lead to resilience, either in isolation or in combination with one another, in two parts. First, we used a delimited person-centered analysis (PCA) to identify advantages present among the most resilient and absent among the least resilient FEMA park residents. Second, we used fuzzy-set analysis (FSA) to systematically uncover advantageous individual-level conditions that were consistent among resilient individuals using the full sample of FEMA park respondents. Implications for sociological theory and disaster mental health research are discussed.