Flooding the others: The vanished minority riverscapes of Ada Kaleh and Sorbian Lusatia

In this article, I focus on the construction of dams and reservoirs in places inhabited by minoritised ethnolinguistic groups on the so-called margins of Europe. I argue that the damage caused by the construction of dams and the consequences of resettlement affect not only the physical environment of local communities but also their intangible cultural heritage, threatening the survival of these minorities as distinct socio-cultural entities. Drawing on concepts of invisibilisation, wastelanding and solastalgia, I show how these processes disproportionately affect groups already positioned at the cultural periphery. Through a comparative analysis of two cases – the submergence of the Turkish-inhabited island of Ada Kaleh on the Danube in today’s Romania and of two Sorbian villages in Lusatia, Germany – the article explores how minority landscapes were discursively marginalised, rendered politically expendable and ultimately sacrificed to national projects of modernisation and energy infrastructure.