Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
Anthropology
Advisor
Murphy Halliburton
Committee Members
Ismael García-Colón
Yarimar Bonilla
Ida Susser
Rosalyn Negrón
Subject Categories
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Keywords
Gender, Care work, disaster, colonialism, Puerto Ricans, New York
Abstract
This dissertation traces the politics of disaster recovery and coloniality in New York City, documenting the forms of ambivalent care that characterize institutionalized disaster recovery programs. I examine how Puerto Ricans arriving in New York City post- hurricane María navigate the racialized and inadequately funded recovery aid program supported by the Office of the Mayor of New York City. Following the events of September 11, 2001, New York City faith-based agencies established programs to assist in rescue, relief, and recovery efforts. The New York City Relief Center (NYRC) was first incorporated in 2003 to address all phases of the disaster life cycle with mitigation education, preparedness training, planning, recovery, and advocacy programs. The Center established a long-term recovery program that provided disaster case management to displaced Puerto Ricans. Despite state funding and city efforts to aid, Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria remained unhoused, unemployed, and disconnected from services. In what amounts to an ambivalent form of state care, city bureaucracies not only permitted but, to a significant degree, produced disaster migrants’ deepening precarity in ways that were both racialized and gendered.
Based on ethnographic research and as a volunteer at NYC’s Relief Center (NYRC) I found that in the absence of adequate state support, disaster case managers (DCMs)–the first point of contact–engaged in gendered care work to create alternative forms of recovery. DCMs, all working-class Latinas mobilized personal networks to ensure displaced Puerto Ricans received materials given a low priority by New York City’s recovery program. DCMs acted in ways that benefited displaced Puerto Ricans even if such actions were never tied directly to an outcome metric. DCMs demonstrate how precarity gives way to life-affirming practices such as community activism, sharing vital information to maneuver bureaucratic red tape, creating networks of care, and in some cases crafting new possibilities for sociality, solidarity, and mutuality. These efforts, headed by women, interrupt the everyday slow violence diasporic and displaced Puerto Ricans face from urban development and neglect, gentrification, environmental degradation, pollution, and state ambivalence.
Recommended Citation
Jahn, Lisa, "Gendered Care Work and State Ambivalence: Disaster Recovery and Puerto Rican Displacement in New York City" (2023). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5552
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