Hotbeds of climate vulnerability: marginalization, informality, and invisibilization of Roma slums in Romania

Abstract

ABSTRACT The term hotbed of vulnerability (or HoV) has recently been used to describe growing inequalities and the increased exposure of marginalized spaces to climate change impacts. What has been less addressed so far is how HoVs are the result of intersecting social processes (marginalization, informality and invisibilization) that expel racialized populations from the space of safe habitation and subject them, via territorial stigmatization and relegation, to the foreseeable impacts of climate change. HoVs emerge as the extreme outcome of the processes mentioned above, through which the concentration of multiple sources of vulnerability coalesces in one location and shapes the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of marginalized families. This paper uses quantitative and qualitative data to flesh out the characteristics of HoVs, first by means of a survey in 96 segregated Roma communities in Romania and, second, using an extended case study of Dăroaia, a Roma community in the Apuseni Mountains affected by floods in July 2021. Our results indicate that there are indeed synergistic effects that occur in HoVs and that these cannot be addressed only by technical means but require instead a comprehensive consideration of their social roots. Continued marginalization, informality, and invisibilization all interact to reproduce HoVs, thereby deepening their vulnerability.