Environmental racism and “the media-government complex”: failures of municipal waste collection for a racialised community in Bulgaria

This article reports on a discourse analysis of local and state media to demonstrate how environmental racism in a European context is reinforced and legitimised through the joint actions of media and government. Institutional discrimination in household waste collection is sustained through what we term here "the media-government complex”, which is pitted against marginalised communities through the reproduction of racism and antigypsyism. We discuss how, in order to absolve public institutions from responsibility for maintaining equitable access to a clean urban environment, both the media and the government invest in reinforcing hegemonic tropes of “dirt” as associated with classed or racialised communities. A case study of the community of Stolipinovo in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, sheds light on the mechanisms of how the media-government (MG) complex operates to support environmental injustice. The article contributes to the small yet growing volume of research in the environmental justice field on discrimination in waste removal and inequitable services in Global North contexts. It further adds to work on racialisation through the materiality of waste, on the production of “the Roma” as a racial figure in Eastern Europe, and on the role of the media for sustaining environmental racism.