Post- Forced Eviction Communities: The Contribution of Personal and Environmental Resources to the Sense of Belonging to the Community

This study addresses a unique event and its significant implications for individuals and communities and aims to examine the contribution of personal and environmental resources to the sense of belonging to the community among post-forced eviction communities. The article is based on the "Perseveration of Resources Theory".

The research sample was comprised of 140 residents who had experienced forced eviction. Nearly half of the participants continued living alongside their fellow community members after the eviction ("a unified community"); while others left to different communities ("a split community"). The participants filled out self report questionnaires assessing their sense of belonging to the community, social and family support, sense of mastery, and self esteem. In order to analyze the relationship between the type of community (unified/split) and the various resources, as well as the sense of belonging to the community, we used two complementary instruments: the Stepwise Regression and the Mediation Model. The research findings refer both to the differences between the types of communities and the contribution of the various resources to the sense of belonging. In the unified communities, the level of social and family support was found higher than in the split communities. Additionally, lower levels of sense of belonging to the community were found in the split communities compared with the unified communities. When examining the contribution of the personal and environmental resources to the sense of belonging to the community, a positive contribution of the sense of mastery in life was found to contribute to the sense of belonging to the community. By contrast, the self esteem resource was not found to contribute to the sense of belonging to the community; while family and social support was found to positively contribute to the sense of belonging to the community. The mediation model presented an interesting finding: an indirect positive relationship was found between the affiliations with both types of communities (unified/split) to the sense of belonging via social support. The discussion refers to the findings and their contribution to both the theory and practice.

The study contributes to the formulation of policy in dealing with populations of  forced eviction: for example, assessing the needs, developing assistance programs, etc. Further, it may also be relevant in other emergency scenarios, such as earthquake, war, ecological disasters and multiple-casualty events. In the case of a forced eviction, a potentially traumatic event, governmental and non-governmental organizations must strive to minimize the damage to the individual, the family and communities before, during and after a forced eviction.