Post-disaster mobilities of Muslim typhoon survivors: How gendered religious preferences and discrimination shape socio-spatial exclusions in Catholic-majority Cagayan de Oro, Philippines

Abstract

Natural hazards don’t care who you worship. However, the evacuation camps, transitional housing sites and relocation sites aimed at helping disaster survivors do. Empirically, this paper explains a puzzle in which Muslim survivors of Typhoon Sendong in the Philippines were all but absent in official post-disaster spaces of this Catholic-majority country. Based on qualitative interviews, focus groups and site visits, I identify two exclusionary mechanisms: (1) prejudices, preferences and practicalities, and (2) socio-spatial design of official post-disaster spaces. This paper argues that by studying Muslim survivors’ post-disaster mobilities, we see that discrimination along the lines of religion, as it plays out in everyday gendered religious socio-spatial practices, repels survivors from accessing evacuation camps and other post-disaster spaces. This is important for two related reasons. One, these humanitarian spaces claim to be inclusive yet, in practice, deter would-be migrants on the basis of religion. Two, religiously-informed gender relations shape the politics of disaster recovery processes, which further exacerbate inequities post-disaster.