A place-based framework to understand family disaster recovery

This paper develops a place based framework to explain how families recover from disasters. Using longitudinal patchwork ethnography in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria it proposes that family recovery is determined by a dynamic interplay between ‘etic facilitators’ (recovery assistance, public infrastructure, labour markets and social assistance, and market dynamics) and ‘emic facilitators’ (families' resources and subjective recovery priorities). The framework explains how families strategically adapt their emic capacities to shifting conditions in post-disasters contexts, determining heterogeneous recovery pathways and speeds. It also provides critical empirical insight into the recovery of intangibles within domestic life and gendered recovery burdens. This framework will be of interest to those seeking to understand how families navigate disasters and offers actionable guidance for designing more equitable, context-sensitive recovery policies.