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I am interested in seeing how social ties and networks have been used to cope with (un)natural disasters. My research focus on places under disasters conditions such as Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, in which social ties have made the difference between life and death. Furthermore, “natural” disaster has been used to approved austerity measures and unjust policies to impoverished communities like in New Orleans after Katrina. These policies were not new, as they are rooted in structures of power to preserve the status quo. Yet, people have resisted, “through a network of branches, cultures, and geographies” that has stimulated a reflective process of looking within for solutions rather than outside. As often this outside solutions are not only detached from community’s reality but can perpetuate social injustices and inequalities.

McKittrick, K., & Woods, C. A. (Eds.). (2007). Black geographies and the politics of place. South End Press.

Bullard, R. D., & Wright, B. (Eds.). (2009). Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to reclaim, rebuild, and revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Westview Press.

1) “The logic of state soverignty in the control of migration clearly prevailed over the universality of the principle of the right to life.”

2) “By analogy with the therapeutic mesasures applied at the end of life for patients suffering from illness deemed incurable, we can describe the measures and procedures devised to allow foreign patients without residence rights to stay in France, receive treatment, and have their living costs paid, as a compassion protocol.”

3) “Precisely because he or she is illegally resident, the sick immigrant may undertake medical tests or seek treatment under a different name, so that the cost of treatment is coverd, or simply to avoid being denounced and deported.”