ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how empowerment is characterized for people experiencing disaster displacement. It presents the case of the displaced residents of Kuma Village in Kumamoto, who were affected by the South Japan floods of July 2020 and, since then, have remained in temporary housing. By presenting the combined crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and disaster displacement in the area, the chapter examines how ‘empowerment’ is revealed in accomplishing the desired change, in the form of both short-term and long-term goals. This study articulates that each disaster is unique, as are the empowerment narratives created, and in this context, people's agencies vary in terms of opportunity structures, enabling actors, and end goals that complete the picture of empowerment. For forcibly displaced people, human security derives from gradual emancipation from their displacement and immobility. Protection strategies in temporary displacement are imperative, and their capacity to reach a durable solution and move past temporary displacement actualizes their empowerment.
