Disaster Justice: Queer and Disabled Mobilities and Infrastructures of Care in the Pacific Northwest
Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of Sociology
First Advisor
Amy Lubitow
Term of Graduation
Spring 2026
Date of Publication
6-3-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Sociology
Department
Sociology
Language
English
Subjects
disability justice, disaster justice, infrastructural violence, internal displacement, mutual aid, queer migration
Physical Description
1 online resource (v, 138 pages)
Abstract
This dissertation examines the social, political, and environmental pressures that drive LGBTQ+ migration to the Pacific Northwest and the social infrastructures people find on arrival. Drawing on thirty-four semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ adults who relocated between 2022 and 2025, it argues that these movements are best understood as responses to slow-onset disasters produced by the compounding interaction of legislative targeting and infrastructural violence.
State-level legislation targeting LGBTQ+ people—particularly transgender individuals—has fractured the geography of safety in the U.S., producing a landscape where civil rights, healthcare access, and everyday security vary dramatically across space. For those navigating these conditions at the intersection of queerness, disability, and economic precarity, these pressures increasingly make futures in place untenable. Across three studies, the dissertation reconceptualizes LGBTQ+ migration to sanctuary regions as internal political displacement; examines how migrants construct decentralized care networks as anticipatory crisis infrastructure; and develops a disaster justice framework integrating disability justice, critical environmental justice, and disaster sociology.
The dissertation makes three contributions. First, it positions internal LGBTQ+ migration as a form of political displacement shaped by cumulative coercion rather than singular crisis events. Second, it documents how marginalized communities build survival infrastructures that challenge dominant models of disaster preparedness. Third, it develops disaster justice as a framework that treats disability and mutual aid as key sites of expertise and infrastructure. It ultimately argues that disaster justice is a framework for both understanding structural harm and recognizing, then resourcing, the infrastructures of care that communities build to survive it.
Rights
© 2026 Rachel Springer
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Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44984
Recommended Citation
Springer, Rachel, "Disaster Justice: Queer and Disabled Mobilities and Infrastructures of Care in the Pacific Northwest" (2026). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 7159.