Displacement and Disaster Recovery: Transnational Governance and Socio-legal Issues Following the 2010 Haiti Earthquake

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti and its aftermath have highlighted inherent but understudied transnational governance and socio-legal complexities of disaster recovery and displacement. The aftermath of the earthquake and issues related to recovery were experienced not only domestically within in Haiti, but also transnationally, particularly in the South Florida region. This region has been particularly important in the recovery process, as it is home to over 300,000 Haitians, it served as a receiving area for severely injured earthquake survivors and for school-aged displacees, and it is an area that is rich with Haitian-American organizations, including activists who have for decades been fighting causes of immigration equality for people of Haitian descent. The specific objectives of this paper are to examine and analyze the key transnational governance and socio-legal issues that have arisen in the South Florida region for four distinct groups: (i) displacees and their related legal, social, cultural, and economic issues; (ii) host communities and governance, legal, and monetary complexities associated with compensation payments (e.g., to hospitals for their services to earthquake survivors); (iii) immigrants within the United States and related legalization and citizenship issues; and (iv) diaspora communities and socio-legal issues related to dual citizenship and their ongoing struggles to have a louder voice in the future of Haiti. Our methodology and data sources include interviews with key members of the Haitian-American diaspora, school districts, city and county governments, non-profit organizations, relief task forces, and local government agencies. We also looked at relevant plans/ policies modified or adopted by governmental and non-governmental institutions in response to governance and socio-legal issues that have arisen as part of our analysis and when referred to by our interviewees. We find that social constructions of the different groups in our study, along with other social, political and economic factors, were important in understanding policy responses to the issues that emerged.