Eroding Landscapes, Emerging Carescapes: How Migrants from Coastal Louisiana Experience Disasters and Care from Afar

Abstract

Although we now know that disaster and climate migration is complex and nonlinear, less is known about how migrants from environmentally threatened areas are affected by disasters back home. This study centers the perspectives and care of 30 migrants from several high-risk coastal Louisiana communities who helped their kin in the wake of Hurricane Ida (2021). In fusing the disaster migration and disaster care literature, it illustrates how migrants engage in gendered care work from afar. It also shows how gender shapes decision making to stay in or stay attached to such environments and even perpetuates the need for future care. The theoretical concept of a “disaster carescape” is proposed to highlight intergenerational care across time and space while emphasizing place (environmentally threatened landscapes) and place attachment in shaping these care relations. The author concludes by suggesting that disaster carescapes will be important to understand as demographics in climate-affected areas shift during this century.