Wastelands is an exploration of trash, the scavengers who collect it, and the precarious communities it sustains. After enduring war and persecution in Kosovo, many Ashkali refugees fled to Belgrade, Serbia, where they were stigmatized as Gypsies, consigned to slums, sidelined from the economy, and subjected to violence. To survive, Ashkali collect the only resource available to them: garbage. Vividly recounting everyday life in an illegal Romani settlement, Eirik Saethre follows Ashkali as they scavenge through dumpsters, build shacks, siphon electricity, negotiate the recycling trade, and migrate between Belgrade, Kosovo, and the European Union. He argues that trash is not just a means of survival: it reinforces the status of Ashkali and Roma as polluted Others, creates indissoluble bonds to transnational capitalism, enfeebles bodies, and establishes a localized sovereignty.
Eirik Saethre is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is the author of Illness Is a Weapon and coauthor of Negotiating Pharmaceutical Uncertainty.
"Wastelands presents an original, compelling, and disturbing account of Ashkali and Romani scavengers in Belgrade, Serbia, severely marginalized groups that face multiple forms discrimination and persecution. Eirik Saethre focuses on their dislocations and humiliations and yet shows their dignity amid their daily struggles to survive. He contrasts the valuable trash they collect with the Serbian view of them as 'trash.' He takes us through shacks, containers, and hidden dwellings on the outskirts of cities and dissects the strenuous labor practices of a group considered to be lazy. He also connects micro to macro spheres via portraits of interpersonal relationships in relation to larger contexts of evictions; migrations to Kosovo, Germany, and Sweden; state policies, asylum processes, and corporate recycling; and ultimately to neoliberalism and global capitalism."––Carol Silverman, author of Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora
"An original and in-depth investigation of the lives of Ashkali, Romani, and other marginalized people in an informal encampment in Belgrade, documenting how much their well-being, social relations, fragile hopes, and meager sustenance depend on trash. Moreover, Saethre shows in painful and illuminating detail how this very dependence on trash is part and parcel of the precarious existence of these families, even as it keeps them alive and gives them hope for a better future."––Joshua O. Reno, author of Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness
252 pp.6 x 9
9780520368514$29.95|£25.00Paper
Oct 2020