Studying Displacement: New Networks, Lessons Learned

• Published in: Sociological inquiry Vol. 84; no. 3; pp. 354 - 359
• Main Authors: Peek, Lori, Fothergill, Alice, Pardee, Jessica W., Weber, Lynn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.08.2014; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Adult Children; Children; Choices; Cooperation; Ethnic Groups; Minority Groups; Natural Disasters
• ISSN: 0038-0245; 1475-682X
• DOI: 10.1111/soin.12053

This article describes an effort to document the experiences of people displaced by Katrina. The hurricane and the flooding that followed ultimately forced the evacuation of about 1.5 million people from across the Gulf Coast. And although the exact numbers will never be known, most researchers and practitioners working in this field now agree that the disaster led to the permanent dislocation of tens of thousands of people. A disproportionate number of those who were displaced over the long term were racial minorities, including over 119,000 African American residents who had not returned to New Orleans as of the 2010 Census count. Here, we describe the efforts of our group, the Research Network on Persons Displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Our goals as a network were to (1) learn what we could about the experiences of displaced Katrina survivors, and (2) consider the ways that the places where people landed -- sometimes by choice, other times by force of circumstance -- shaped various outcomes for displaced children and adults. Like the other contributions in this special section of Sociological Inquiry, we focus less on our specific findings and more on how we actually went about completing our research studies. Our hope is that by sharing some thoughts about our own process -- and by describing how our projects fit under the larger umbrella of the Katrina Task Force -- that readers might consider how this type of collaborative social science work could enhance their own scholarly practice. Adapted from the source document.