In 2019, Natural Hazards Center Graduate Research Assistant Melissa Villarreal set out to explore the unique challenges immigrants, both documented and undocumented, faced in recovering from Hurricane Harvey. Her work recently culminated in a successful dissertation defense that outlined how racialized and gendered policies inhibit the disaster preparedness, response, and recovery of women of Mexican origin.
Villarreal’s intersectional, multi-level analysis of these women and their disproportionate vulnerability during recovery explored impacts in long-term housing, as well as their cumulative disaster exposure after Hurricane Harvey. She found that anti-immigrant policies create barriers for immigrants by failing to consider their concerns, needs, and unique situations.
Melissa Villarreal
These policies, along with structural, organizational, and interpersonal power dynamics, make it difficult for Mexican women—whether immigrants or their daughters born in the United States—to restore their lives after a disaster. Villarreal noted that it’s important to recognize the unique obstacles that the women face so we can create interventions to address inequities and ultimately manage disasters in a more just way.
Villarreal’s work has been recognized by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Sociological Association. She has received awards from the University of Colorado Boulder, including the an award to advance research and teaching in the social sciences and the Beverly Sears Graduate Student Award. Villarreal also received funding from the CU Boulder Sociology Department and the Natural Hazards Center.
Villarreal was supported by her dissertation committee, chaired by Lori Peek and including Jill Harrison, Celeste Montoya, Rachel Rinaldo, and Christina Sue. She worked closely with Latine undergraduate research assistants and NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate participants, to analyze data.
The Natural Hazards Center is thrilled to congratulate Villarreal, who will begin as an ORISE postdoctoral scholar with the U.S. Forest Service in September. She is also currently in talks with book publishers about revising her dissertation into a book manuscript.
A recording of Villarreal’s public dissertation defense is available in English and Spanish. Thank you to the Community Language Cooperative for providing simultaneous translation.