Focussing on the Needs of Migrants in Post-Disaster Urban Life from A Sociological Perspective: The Possibility of Weak Adaptation

The Maraş-centred earthquake that occurred in Turkey on February 6, 2023, was the disaster of the century, causing fifty thousand deaths and affecting nearly ten million people. In addition to highlighting the problems that need to be resolved in the management of this process, the research will attempt to show practitioners and policymakers how culturally different the “home” of survivors is from the place and region in which they are resettled. Therefore, the main objective of the study is to find out how earthquake survivors will adapt to the cities they move to. In order to evaluate this, we will first look at post-disaster studies conducted globally. The discussion revolves around the production of emotional spaces and sustainability of cultural practices, the reproduction of social capital in urban context, and future expectations. These three main discussions in the literature show that migrants are active agents to integrate into the new urban space post-disaster conditions. However, migrants’ integration efforts will be understood through the concept of “weak adaptation,” which has been developed in this study. This concept, which expresses this immigrant group's effort to hold on to the city, is a contribution to the literature to explain the positionalities of migrants who feel in limbo.