Displaced Once Again

Honduran Migrant Children in the Path of Katrina

Abstract

This paper explores the experiences of Honduran migrant children in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some had migrated to this city after Hurricane Mitch devastated their already poverty-stricken country in 1998, but many of them were forced to relocate again after Katrina. Many others have only recently arrived in New Orleans to join relatives attracted by the construction boom that followed the disaster. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Honduras and New Orleans, I examine the contribution of these young migrants to their families’ survival strategies, including their participation in post-disaster reconstruction work. Findings counter dominant frameworks that pathologize the experience of disaster survivors, assuming their responses to be maladaptive, and conceptualize children as passive, dependent victims. Instead, I argue for a holistic approach that places young displacees in the broader context of the cultural and socioeconomic factors that prefigured the catastrophe and examines children’s resilience, not just their vulnerability.