Article
Legal aid amid bureaucracy
Journal of Legal Anthropology
(2022)
Abstract
Disaster lawyers navigate bureaucratic impediments to insurance
claims and settlement and federal recovery and relief, and they act
as third-party facilitators for disaster-affected clients to help enable their
survival efforts. The roles of such lawyers in navigating paperwork and
bureaucratic processes on behalf of survivors, while assisting them in
meeting basic daily needs, has become seen as being integral to recovery
in these processes. We utilise findings from semi-structured interviews
with disaster law practitioners working with disaster survivors in the
south-eastern United States (SEUS) to examine the bureaucratic socio-legal
life of disasters. We marshal bureaucratic violence literature to analyse
disaster law practitioners’ perspectives of the socio-legal nature of
disasters in the SEUS, demonstrating that the bureaucratic technologies
of recovery are primary obstacles to expedient recovery and successful
legal work with survivors.
Keywords
- bureaucracy,
- bureaucratic violence,
- disaster,
- FEMA,
- legal aid
Disciplines
Publication Date
Winter 2022
Citation Information
Amanda Reinke and Nicole F Bevilacqua. "Legal aid amid bureaucracy" Journal of Legal Anthropology Vol. 6 Iss. 2 (2022) ISSN: 1758-9584 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/amandareinke/35/