Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
European Sociological Association (ESA) RN38 Mid-Term Conference “Rural and Regional Realities in Motion: Territoriality, Temporality, and Technology”, Hania, Yunanistan, 3 - 05 Eylül 2025, (Özet Bildiri)
The 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes triggered widespread displacement and immobilization across both rural and urban regions. While dominant frameworks often reduce disaster mobility to a binary—where the wealthy move and the poor stay—our research in Hatay challenges this assumption by revealing how rural (im)mobility unfolds through temporally and spatially differentiated dynamics. Drawing on the new mobilities paradigm (Sheller & Urry, 2006; Schewel, 2020), we conceptualize (im)mobility as an emergent outcome shaped by intersecting infrastructures, governance systems, and socio-economic hierarchies rather than fixed attributes like class or legal status.
In rural Hatay, the agricultural sector initially demonstrated resilience in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake: farmland suffered limited physical damage and work resumed relatively quickly. Yet over time, medium-term vulnerabilities intensified—labour shortages due to outmigration, disrupted supply chains, and shifting social compositions led to heightened precarity. These developments reveal rural areas not as passive recipients of recovery interventions, but as dynamic spaces where mobility decisions are negotiated amid structural constraints and local adaptations. Crucially, the integration of refugee labour into previously exclusionary rural markets emerged as an adaptive, yet transformative, resilience strategy.
Our findings identify three key rural drivers of post-disaster (im)mobility: (1) property ownership functioning as both a resource and a constraint; (2) evolving labour market dynamics and rural-urban shifts, particularly from agriculture to construction; and (3) the expanding role of refugee labour in reshaping local economies. We argue that understanding these drivers within their territorial and temporal contexts is essential for developing more responsive and equitable recovery policies in disaster-affected rural regions.