DOI: 10.17603/ds2-5bm1-y393
title: Part 3: Planning Documents for Semi-Structured Interviews with Mexican Immigrant Women
title: in Documenting the Undocumented: How Mexican Immigrant Women Navigate Long-Term Post-Disaster Housing Recovery and Cumulative Disaster Impacts

description: Disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity. Much of the current disaster literature adopts a social vulnerability perspective, which considers how political, social, and economic factors influence pre-disaster preparation and post-disaster recovery. Even with this focus, however, there remains a dearth of literature on immigrant populations and their long-term recovery trajectories. As such, my dissertation is an intersectional, multi-level analysis of Mexican immigrant women and their disproportionate vulnerability in post-disaster recovery. Specifically, I will strive to answer four main research questions: 

1.	How does current U.S. disaster policy address issues related to gender, ethnicity, and citizenship status?
2.	How do service providers from community-based organizations navigate disaster recovery systems to assist Mexican immigrant women and their families in their long-term housing recovery, particularly in the context of cumulative disaster impacts?
3.	How are Mexican immigrant women navigating the system of disaster recovery to move forward in their long-term housing recovery?
4.	How does cumulative exposure to multiple disasters impact long-term housing recovery among Mexican immigrant women in disaster-affected areas? 

My dissertation data consists of three parts. For Part I, I collected organizational reports as well as current federal, state, and local disaster recovery planning and policy documents (n=172) in the U.S to understand the larger context of disaster recovery. In Part II, I conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with service providers in community-based organizations in 2019 (n=16) and again in 2021 (n=8) to assess the progression of Mexican immigrant recovery—with a specific focus on women’s experiences—in the four years since Harvey, particularly in the context of cumulative disaster impacts. For Part III, I conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with Mexican immigrant women (n=56) in 2022 to understand their recovery from their own point of view, with a focus on how gender stratification, ethnicity, housing tenure, and access to organizational assistance affect recovery trajectories.
description: Fieldwork included semi-structured interviews with Mexican immigrant women that were impacted by Harvey. I asked general questions about their overall recovery since Harvey; [if referred to me by a service provider] why they sought help from the organization(s) that identified them; how they perceive the assistance they received from the organization(s); [if not referred to me by a service provider] if they sought help from an organization(s) and why or why not; what the challenges have been for their long-term recovery and access to resources; what actions they have taken to facilitate their own recovery; and if they have been directly affected by Imelda, Beta, Uri, or COVID-19 and if so, how that has affected their recovery. 
My goal with this project is to illuminate the recovery process along multiple levels of analysis. By interviewing and gaining the perspective of Mexican immigrant women, I will be able to construct a comprehensive picture of the overall process of recovery for this community. Further, by collecting data four years after the impact of Harvey, I am able to understand how the subsequent tropical and winter storms and the COVID-19 pandemic impacted long-term recovery. Data is being deidentified and will be published soon.