Environmental Injustice: Migrants in France VS Roma in Slovakia
Anyi Li
Environmental justice, a term initially developed in the 1980s in the US, describes a society that is both environmentally sustainable and socially just, which means all members would receive equal amounts of environmental benefits and harms and equal access in environmental decision-making (Lepofsky). The opposite of environmental justice is environmental injustice. It refers to a society where certain members bear unequal amounts of environmental benefits or burdens and unequal access in environmental decision-making due to their social identities, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, income, gender, and sexual orientations. Despite several efforts to achieve environmental justice in urban Europe, environmental injustice continues to occur, particularly in industrial regions of France, where a larger population of migrants reside, and in Roma settlements in Slovakia. While both cases exemplify distributive and procedural environmental injustice, the Roma people in Slovakia face a more significant degree of environmental exclusion than the migrants in French industrial regions due to ethnically-targeted, systematic social exclusion.
Both the industrial regions of France and the Roma settlements in Slovakia exemplify distributive environmental injustice. Distributive environmental justice is defined as a just outcome in which every social group and community receives an equal distribution of environmental resources and harms (Lepofsky). Distributive environmental injustice is present when certain outcomes are notably unequal. According to the research study “Environmental Justice in a French Industrial Region: Are Polluting Industrial Facilities Equally Distributed?” in the industrial Franche-Comte region, “communities that are most heavily burdened with environmentally hazardous facilities are higher foreign-born communities, while socio-economic deprivation seems to be of less importance in the location of these facilities, everything else held constant” (Viel, et al.). The text is self-explanatory. The foreign-born migrant communities face a disproportionate amount of environmental hazards from the toxic emissions of nearby industrial facilities. The outcome of environmental policies, regardless of whether or not it is intentionally unequal, results in uneven distributions. Similarly, Richard Filcak writes in his book Living Beyond The Pale: Environmental Justice and the Roma Minority, “once Roma inhabit a space … it becomes an area for the allocation of problematic projects or facilities, and it might turn out to become a place of environmentally problematic management practices” (Filcak 2-3). Evidently, the Roma people disproportionately receive environmental problems. The above evidence indicates a drastically uneven distribution of environmental benefits, with the Roma people unable to secure primary resources to satisfy daily needs. Thus, both migrants in the Franche-Comte regions and Slovakian Roma settlements suffer distributive environmental injustice.
Additionally, both the industrial regions of France and the Roma settlements in Slovakia experience procedural environmental injustice. Procedural environmental justice is defined as a just process that intends to provide every social group and community with an even distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, equal access to environmental resources and harms, and recognize and remove exclusions and biases (Lepofsky). Procedural environmental injustice is present when the environmental policies are intentionally unjust or when the institutions of environmental policy-making fail to identify and remove elements hindering equal access to environmental resources and harms. In the above paragraph, the Slovakian government’s intentional allocation of environmentally hazardous facilities and projects to the Roma shantytowns indicates a distributive environmental injustice and reveals the institutional discrimination and procedural environmental injustice against the Roma communities. Furthermore, the Roma people cannot access the environmental decision-making process to enact legislative changes needed to improve their situation. In Living Beyond The Pale: Environmental Justice and the Roma Minority, Richard Filcak states that the different subgroups of the Roma people “together with other social factors, has resulted in the inability of the Roma to unite or enter into political discourse and decision making at the state or local level” (Filcak 46). The Roma people’s political passiveness in environmental decision-making is partially due to an inability to access the fundamental environmental resource -- involvement in decision making. Though the disunity within Roma groups also partly contributes to the inactiveness, the lack of effort from the Slovakian government to ensure a just system of public participation is also to blame. Obviously, the Roma people in Slovakia endures procedural environmental injustice.
Similarly, the migrants in French industrial regions also face procedural vulnerability that makes them voiceless in environmental policy-making. Based on the study “Environmental Justice in a French Industrial Region: Are Polluting Industrial Facilities Equally Distributed?” “the ability of upper/middle class and native French communities to mobilize via local media and pressure on elected officials may increase the likelihood that governing bodies disproportionately protect these communities (consciously or not)” (Viel et al.). The migrants in the Franche-Comte region who disproportionately suffer from nearby polluting facilities are also the ones who are disproportionately voiceless in the decision-making process. This definitely constitutes procedural environmental injustice and demonstrates a need for the French environmental policymakers to recognize and encourage socially equal public participation.
Though both the Roma people in Slovakia and migrants in French industrial regions experience procedural environmental injustice, the degree of the injustice the Roma people encounter is significantly more severe than the French migrants. Specifically, the Roma people face environmental exclusion stemmed from systematic social exclusion and discrimination. According to Richard Filcak’s book Living Beyond The Pale: Environmental Justice and the Roma Minority, the Roma communities face blatant, institutionalized discrimination. They are often marginalized by the non-Roma majority and allocated by the government to the outskirts of cities or villages, where they live in close proximity to toxic wastes, pollutions, and contaminations, are frequently exposed to dangerous floods and landslides, and reside far away from daily necessities such as potable water and sewage systems (Filcak). Furthermore, the non-Roma majority segregates the Roma people from them, expels the Roma people from environmental resources, excludes the Roma people from economic opportunities, and refuses to allow the Roma people to participate in cities or villages’ sociocultural life. Notably, as explained by Richard Filcak, “[a]s soon as the conditions modify–for example, value of the land changes, new road close to the settlements proximity is constructed, or non-Roma realize that the Roma are too close to the village–multiple ways were utilized to resettle them” (Filcak 1-2). This alarming degree of institutionalized procedural environmental injustice and environmental and social exclusion is much harsher than what the French migrants encounter. Viel and his fellow researchers state that through their research, “[t]o [their] knowledge there is no evidence of explicit discrimination,” and that “[they] are not aware of any evidence of unequal environmental protection” (Viel et al.). This suggests that while the French migrants still live with distributive and procedural environmental injustice, what confronts them is not as explicit and flagrant as the current conditions of the Roma people.
Despite several global, national, and local efforts to achieve environmental justice, both the Roma people in Slovakia and the migrants in industrial regions of France experience disproportionate amounts of environmental burdens and lack of access to participation in environmental decision-making. Therefore, both cases constitute environmental injustice. However, the level of injustice they face is substantially different. Compared to the migrants in the Franche-Comte region, the Roma people in Slovakia face a more significant degree of environmental exclusion as a result of ethnically-targeted, systematic social exclusion.
Bibliography:
Filcak, Richard. Living Beyond The Pale: Environmental Justice and the Roma Minority,
Central European University Press, Budapest, Hungary, Central European University
Press, 2012.
Lepofsky, Jonathan. “Environmental Justice in Urban Europe.” GEOG 468, 20 Jan. -
5 Mar. 2021. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Viel, Jean-François, et al. “Environmental Justice in a French Industrial Region: Are Polluting
Industrial Facilities Equally Distributed?” Health & Place, vol. 17, no. 1, Jan. 2011,
pg. 257-262.