Misfits in the Polish Carpathians: Pastoralism, property, and spatial justice beyond redistribution

In this article, I examine the demand for spatial justice among shepherds in Highland Poland, focusing on the ‘misfit’ between the mobile, communal nature of traditional pastoralism and the static perceptions of landscape and property underpinning Polish and European agricultural policy. The movement of animals and people through a mountain environment increasingly dominated by infrastructure, private property and commercial activity, creates considerable social and spatial friction in Highland communities. Drawing on the work of legal scholar Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, I show how shepherds seek to address these frictions by lobbying for greater political and legal recognition of their right to move through the landscape. In this way, I argue, they propose an alternative vision of spatial justice as based in and enacted through custodianship and mobility, challenging dominant ideas of spatial justice based on property rights and resource redistribution.