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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.

This open access book explores the intersection of property law, relocation, and resettlement processes in the United States and among communities that grapple with migration as an adaptation strategy. As communities face the prospect of relocating because of rising seas, policy makers, disaster specialists, and community leaders are scrambling to understand what adaptation pathways are legally possible. While in its ideal application, law functions blindly and without variation, the authors find that legal contradictions come to bear on resettlement processes and place certain communities further in harm's way. This book will unearth these contradictions in order to understand why successful community-based resettlement has presented such a challenge to communities that are experiencing increasing land deterioration as a result of climate change.