Spatial confrontations: Abandonment of self-labor in transitional sheltering after a natural disaster

This study investigated various types of place-based negotiations (spatial confrontations) observed during the creation of transitional shelters that led to verbal and physical violence among evacuees following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka. It also investigated how the use of the evacueesʹ own labor (self-labor) during the creation of the transitional shelters affected spatial negotiations between internally displaced people and shelter organizers. A connection was found between total and partial abandonment of transitional houses and the lack of regard for self-labor during post-disaster recovery attempts. The accepted thesis of increased violence on vulnerable groups in transitional environments after an extreme disaster was expanded. The study adapted a method of systematic acquisition of themes through extemporaneous discourse based on open-ended cognitive interviews conducted among snowball sampled 32 individuals from two transitional facilities in the southern coast. Where labor is abundant and labor-intensive small-scale fishing is livelihood cum lifestyle, the evacuees found abandonment of their labor in the transitional sheltering process both unsustainable and potentially harmful for long term resiliency against disasters. The study also revealed that spatial confrontations did not exist separate from other forms of violence stemming from inevitable transactions between social and economic agents. Employment of self-labor alone cannot cease spatial confrontations, therefore, the root causes of the violence triggered by the transitional environments need to be systematically addressed.