Abstract
Natural hazards don't care who you worship. However, the evacuation camps, transitional housing sites and relocation sites aimed at helping disaster survivors do. Empirically, this paper explains a puzzle in which Muslim survivors of Typhoon Sendong in the Philippines were all but absent in official post-disaster spaces of this Catholic-majority country. Based on qualitative interviews, focus groups and site visits, I identify two exclusionary mechanisms: (1) prejudices, preferences and practicalities, and (2) socio-spatial design of official post-disaster spaces. This paper argues that by studying Muslim survivors' post-disaster mobilities, we see that discrimination along the lines of religion, as it plays out in everyday gendered religious socio-spatial practices, repels survivors from accessing evacuation camps and other post-disaster spaces. This is important for two related reasons. One, these humanitarian spaces claim to be inclusive yet, in practice, deter would-be migrants on the basis of religion. Two, religiously-informed gender relations shape the politics of disaster recovery processes, which further exacerbate inequities post-disaster.