About this episode

Elana Resnick discusses her book on the intersections of race, environmentalism, and labor in Europe, focusing on the Roma community's role in waste management.

Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide, promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism's excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe (Stanford University Press, 2025) presents a fundamentally different account of sustainability and waste itself by uncovering the intersections of international environmental reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Roma comprise the bulk of the country's waste workers, while anti-Roma racism casts them as socially disposable. Without their labor, however, the country cannot meet the sustainability targets required by the European Union. Drawing on fieldwork that spans twenty years, including eleven months working alongside Romani women street sweepers, and years embedded in waste organizations, political campaigns, Roma NGOs, and activist groups, Elana Resnick examines the power hierarchies that shape both waste management and European geopolitics. Instead of focusing on only environmental harms or toxic distributions, Refusing Sustainability  approaches Romani life-worlds as spaces of creative production, and also tells several larger stories: of…

People in this episode

Guest: Elana Resnick

Topics covered

• sustainability
• environmentalism
• race
• waste management
• Roma labor
• European geopolitics

Keywords

• sustainability
• environmental degradation
• Roma
• waste workers
• racial capitalism
• democratic failures
• mutual aid
• women's friendships

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stanford University Press

Books & works: Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe

Places: Bulgaria, Europe, European Union

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