This paper argues that Hurricane Katrina accelerated ongoing social processes involving neoliberal policies, labour migration and racial boundary shifts. In the storm’s wake, neoliberal policies promoted the reorganisation of the local labour force and stimulated the immigration of vulnerable Latino immigrant workers. The ways in which existing labour policies were selectively enforced also worked to promote workers’ vulnerability and to ‘privatise’ risk. These policies were designed to recover and rebuild New Orleans, but ultimately relied on racialising immigrant workers.
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