Life next to a landfill: urban marginality, environmental injustice and the Roma

Author:

Škobla Daniel,Filčák Richard

Abstract

The site known as Lipnica is a segregated Roma settlement built on the edge of a municipal landfill in the district town of Turčany, central Slovakia (fictitious names have been used for the site and the town). The settlement emerged as a result of processes rooted in neoliberal economic restructuring, accompanied by a sharp rise in unemployment in the 1990s. The settlement was originally built to provide temporary housing for those who were in arrears for rent in municipal flats, and originally consisted of one apartment building and several modular cabins. In the following years it expanded, and today it is an ethnic quasi-ghetto for approximately 400 Roma inhabitants. From a theoretical perspective, an analysis of the Lipnica settlement is situated at the intersection of critical race theory and environmental justice theory. In this article, we describe the trajectory leading to the formation of the settlement and analyse how the impoverishment of the Roma, coupled with the construction of the community as ‘maladjusted’ anti-social others, facilitated their spatial exclusion. We conclude that the case demythologises culturising explanations for the emergence of Roma settlements, by using empirical data to show how Lipnica developed as a result of intentional discriminatory policies of the local ruling class used against an ethnic minority.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

General Social Sciences,Sociology and Political Science,Social Sciences (miscellaneous),Archeology,Anthropology,Archeology,Cultural Studies

Reference54 articles.

1. Due to the sensitive nature of some of the information, the authors have used fictitious names for the town and the settlement. Last names of persons mentioned are abbreviated. All other data, toponyms, names and document titles are real.

2. A. Jurová, Vývoj rómskej problematiky na Slovensku po roku 1945 [Development of Roma issues in Slovakia after 1945] (Bratislava: Goldpress Publishers, 1993).

3. According to development forecasts, the Roma population in Slovakia currently consists of approximately 422,000 persons – 7.8 per cent of the total population of Slovakia. See B. Šprocha, ‘Reprodukcia rómskeho obyvateľstva na Slovensku a prognóza jeho populačného vývoja’ [Reproduction of the Roma population in Slovakia and prognosis of its population development] (Bratislava: Prognostický ústav SAV, VDC Infostat, 2014).

4. W. Guy, Between Past and Future: the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2001).

5. J. Filadelfiová, D. Gerbery and D. Škobla, Report on the Living Conditions of Roma in Slovakia (Bratislava: United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Europe, 2009).

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