On Evacuees'mobility and Social Divisions after the Kobe Earthquake : How the Movement of People Is Exposed to the Power of Spatial Segregation?

In this paper, we would like to discuss an experimental perspective for analyzing the movement of people after the great disaster based on fieldwork research in Japan. Specifically, this paper aims to examine the process whereby the movement of people including Asian migrants is exposed to the power of spatial segregation, remembering the case of the Kobe Earthquake that occurred in 1995. In the time of disaster, existing social divisions are said to be amplified since the evacuees’ vulnerability is influenced by social factors, such as class, gender, ethnicity, age, disability and status of residence (Wisner et al. 2004). Based on this thought, we will also consider how the condition of vulnerability would be changed through changing the public situations surrounding the evacuees’ lives on the move. First, reviewing the previous research on this earthquake, we will overview the damage situation, the multiethnic situation of the city, and the diversified process of evacuation. Second, we will focus on some episodes of excluded migrants, and their situational changes, resulting from the shelter related with multiethnic assistances for disaster victims. This contrasts with transformation of the social sphere of mutual interactions among the evacuees, due to the urban reconstruction and urgent residence policy, through which their differences of vulnerability were gradually amplified by the public policy. Then, we will point out the social predicament that is called “Fukkou Saigai” in Japanese(Shiozaki 2014）, the power of reconstruction that makes evacuee’s mobility deprived, and segregates them spatially, not by the natural disaster, but by the construction of public shelters. Finally, for further comparative research on evacuee’s mobility after the Tohoku Earthquake in 2011, we will indicate the problems for external evacuees beyond the limits of public policy. Does it mean free from the power to be divided and segregated?