Rebuilding New Orleans, Reinforcing Inequalities? Inequalities in New Orleans and how they have been exacerbated by Hurricane Katrina in different stages of the disaster

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Sociology - Social System and Social Structure, grade: 1.3, Bielefeld University, language: English, abstract: This paper wants to contribute by taking a closer look at the inter-linkages of different forms of inequality and how they influenced and caused each other in different stages of the disaster. Therefore, the time before the hurricane, the time-span of re-migration, and New Orleans' long-term development will be analyzed with regard to their specific importance for the exacerbation of inequalities. Some scholars argue that '[c]limate change has become part of high politics'. The scientific community agrees that climate change is partly responsible for the increase of extreme weather phenomena even though climate change's impact factor cannot be exactly determined. People all around the world are exposed to extreme weather conditions and it can generally be assumed that '[t]here will always be crisis, catastrophes and uncertainty'. People try to lessen the impact of natural hazards and while almost all communities and countries are statistically affected by those hazards, their responses differ massively. One strategy to lessen the impact of those '[r]are, if not unique, and as striking rarely and without warning' phenomena is migration. 'Environmental migration is not a new phenomenom. [...] However, global climate change threatens to significantly increase human movement, both within states and across international borders'. A lot of research has been dedicated to identifying and differentiating between mitigation and adaption strategies, however, less attention has been invested into the resettlement of and in urban areas. Further, it should be noticed that due to the on-going trend of urbanization, the city as a matter of analysis of climate-induced migration will steadily gain importance and due to rising sea levels, coastal cities are more affected by climate change and thereby by climate-induced migration than the inland. Even though numbers vary massively depending on the employed definitions concerning climate-induced migration, it can nonetheless be stated that 'the populations of coastal megacities have skyrocketed' in the last couple decades and, on the basis of those tendencies, it can be concluded that more people will consequently be affected by climate-related phenomena in the future.