Presenting three case studies of resettled refugees living in different geographic locations across New Zealand, the authors outline six principles of disaster communications to improve engagement with culturally and linguistically diverse groups. Across the three studies, they implemented a research design of working with refugee-background research assistants to conduct interviews and focus groups with 175 people from refugee backgrounds (51 interviews and 21 focus groups) about their perspectives of and potential responses to natural hazards and disaster events. As the three sites are characterised by differential exposure to disaster risk, the researchers discuss the implications for disaster communications and examine how culture, linguistic competencies, gender, age, geography and other social locations have relevance for disaster communication approaches.
The three case studies highlight that refugee-background groups have more in common with one another relative to disaster communications than differences. However, important differences across all three case studies of a current disaster, higher risk, and lower risk hazard contexts were noted. Most importantly, the studies signal the importance of building relationships with communities well before a disaster occurs. The intersectional identification of participants was important across the three case studies related to gender, age, religion, community size, and English language competencies. These considerations were generally consistent across the case studies and highlight the need to tailor disaster communications beyond the generic identifier of the refugee label.