Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environmental Analysis

Reader 1

Visiting Assistant Professor Joanna Dyl

Reader 2

Assistant Professor Leila Safavi

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2025 Gianna Maria Hutton

Abstract

This thesis examines Florida's manufactured housing communities through the intersecting frameworks of energy justice, critical heat studies, and housing displacement scholarship, centering how structural, political, and economic forces shape uneven exposure to thermal insecurity and housing precarity. Using a mixed-methods approach combining statistical regression analysis of American Community Survey microdata (2019-2023) and spatial case study of Miami-Dade County's heat governance and The Li'l Abner Mobile Home Community’s displacement, this research investigates how manufactured housing residents experience compounded exclusions across energy systems, urban heat governance, and housing security. The findings reveal that manufactured home residents face a 26% higher energy burden compared to other housing types, with renters experiencing an additional 11% burden, while simultaneously being systematically excluded from Miami-Dade's heat protection infrastructure and subjected to state-facilitated displacement justified through logics of productive deservingness. This research amplifies manufactured housing communities' orientation as simultaneously hypervisible (when the land they live on represents untapped capital or bodies constitute exploitable labor) and invisible (within heat governance and housing protection), raising critical questions about climate adaptation strategies that privilege economic productivity over fundamental need and the inseparability of heat justice and housing justice.

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