Beyond the "double emergency". The Covid-19 pandemic and emergency shelters in the central Apennines after the earthquake (2016-2017)

Abstract

As part of the broad interdisciplinary reflection on housing in the internal Italian areas, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between the pandemic emergency and post-disaster temporary housing. It describes comparative research within two temporary housing areas in the province of Macerata, installed following the earthquake that severely hit the central Apennines in 2016-2017. Using qualitative methods, particularly the ethnographic ones, the research highlights some critical issues: on the one hand, the development of resilient processes already activated following the quake; on the other hand, the worsening of vulnerabilities of post-disaster temporary housing. The pandemic has shown how in the internal areas affected by the earthquake, already characterized by temporariness, the emergency seems to become chronic and represent everyday life instead of an exceptional condition.