Voices in the margins of recovery: relocated Cantabrians in Waikato

Abstract

No two disasters are the same. Accordingly, sociocultural geographers are aptly positioned to include the place-based and temporal aspects of disasters in their analyses. By examining the experiences of 19 Cantabrian families who have relocated to the Waikato region, this paper offers stories from the margins of ‘traditional’ disaster research. Often researchers know a great deal about the population at the site of the disaster, but little about the people who move away. Further, by investigating relocation, the insider/outsider dichotomy is challenged, as participants in this research are simultaneously inside and outside the earthquake events and their ongoing impacts. ‘Ownership’ of the disaster narratives, including research, lays open ideas of who can speak for whom. What and who is inside and/or outside a disaster event also allows a finer distinction of how place attachment filters experience and ideas of recovery, which are not diminished under internal migration.