Cultural Resilience Under Pressure: Examining Diversity and Multigenerational Living in Regional Responses to Climate Shocks

• In Event: 30821 - Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 13

Abstract

This study will utilize the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates to examine how linguistic diversity and multigenerational living function as cultural resilience strategies during climate-related disasters. While racial diversity has been previously studied in disaster resilience research, this study focuses on linguistic and cultural diversity as a critical lens, recognizing how language barriers both reflect cultural practices and create unique challenges in accessing disaster relief resources. Multigenerational households, which are more common among certain racial and ethnic groups, reflect cultural norms that prioritize family cohesion and provide economic and social resilience and also likely to have shared childcare, pooled income, and food resources that provide vital support. The study will explore whether linguistically isolated households are more likely to adopt multigenerational living due to barriers to accessing external support systems, such as government relief programs. Migration patterns will also be analyzed to determine whether different linguistic and cultural groups are more likely to relocate as extended families or remain in place, intensifying reliance on shared living arrangements after disasters.
The analysis will focus on available ACS data aligned with key climate events during the 2010–2023 period in the US. Using geospatial analysis, the study will map the prevalence of multigenerational households and migration flows across counties, identifying spatial clusters where linguistic isolation, housing cost burdens, and climate vulnerabilities intersect. A temporal analysis will compare ACS 5-year estimates from disaster-affected periods to baseline periods, supplemented with external datasets such as FEMA disaster declarations and NOAA climate data, to address the limitations of 5-year estimates in capturing short-term impacts.

Author

• Bijoyetri Samaddar, University of Wisconsin-Madison