Employment, environmental pollution and working class life in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina

People's experiences of a polluted space are intimately linked with their relative concerns for quality of lifeand livelihoods. Thus quality of environment and security of employment are two closely related issues insocial conflicts over environmental pollution. Rather than being implicated in a trade-off relationship,environmental quality and job provision are both part of the life of community residents. Bringing togetherthe literature on the political ecology of environmental conflicts and the social constructionist literature onpublic perceptions of environmental risks, this article argues that the working class and disadvantagedsections of society are often confronted with alliances between the industry, institutions and otherstakeholders which may serve to legitimate a particular configuration of things in which the appropriation ofsome resources by the industry is regarded as legitimate. However, these arrangements are unstable: they aresubject to constant renegotiation between the social groups implicated. Thus, how the emergence of concernsabout the local environment relates to preoccupations about the state of the local economy is related to aprocess whereby these relationships are constructed and re-negotiated. These questions are analyzed using acase study of environmental pollution from coal-energy production in the city of Tuzla, Bosnia andHerzegovina. The case shows that both concerns for the environment and unemployment are articulatedsimultaneously in the context of industrial pollution, together with the redefinition of the socio-economiclandscapes of post-industrial Tuzla.