Unequal disaster treatment by authorities re-marginalizes minority residents and dissolves unity

Evidence

Through interviews with 19 residents (16 flooded and 3 disrupted), 15 months after the flood, we found variety in people’s perceptions of their sense of community (Ntontis et al., 2020). Some interviewees reported that, despite earlier feelings of belonging to their wider community, they now no longer felt that sense of shared social identity. For some, this was because the flood was over, and no common fate was experienced any longer to bring them together. Others said they no longer saw the identity of being a disaster survivor as relevant and distanced themselves from this past traumatic experience. Crucially, for people belonging to minority groups (in this case the travelling community), the initial community spirit and support they experienced and received, respectively, in the early stages of the flooding disappeared when the authorities, according to them, treated them unequally compared to the settled residents, by providing them with less support. This reaffirmed their ‘lower’, marginalised status, and served to alienate them from the wider community. — John Drury and Evangelos Ntontis, A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF COLLECTIVE…, 35

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral-panic/social-exclusion theme in the reader’s work on how institutions treat minorities; also resonates with the travelling-community as an outgroup parallel to other re-marginalization findings. — connects to: Disaster solidarity does not erase existing inequality and often reproduces it. — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 45; Social capital both retains residents and can worsen discrimination after disasters — John Drury and Evangelos Ntontis, A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF COLLECTIVE…, 13; Metropolitan disasters produce only fleeting cross-difference solidarity before turn to blame — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 963 (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John Drury and Evangelos Ntontis, A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF COLLECTIVE…, 35

Related

• Disaster solidarity does not erase existing inequality and often reproduces it. (similarity 0.84)
• Metropolitan disasters produce only fleeting cross-difference solidarity before turn to blame (similarity 0.84)
• Post-disaster solidarity communities can reproduce existing structural inequality (similarity 0.83)
• Social capital both retains residents and can worsen discrimination after disasters (similarity 0.81)
• Outcome inequality between disasters is written before hazards strike (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Metropolitan disasters produce only fleeting cross-difference solidarity before turn to blame #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 963
• Shared catastrophe briefly unites people across difference before giving way to division and reprisal #corroborates (0.80)