Leaving New Orleans,Again

Abstract

After Hurricane Katrina, the author's research on Mexican migration to the United States expanded to include disaster driven migration. This new project, and life in a disaster zone, made achieving a balance between work and family even more difficult than it would normally be for a pre-tenure faculty member and mother of a young child. When the author returned to New Orleans after the evacuation, she began studying the Latino immigrants arriving there to do the construction work that was so critical to the city's recovery. She made the difficult decision to leave New Orleans in July 2007 to balance the competing demands of teaching, research, and family. In the process, she learned about academics' particular vulnerabilities and some coping strategies to manage those.