“Our Plants are Slowly Dying here, Just Like us”: Coping with Pollution in Turkey’s “Cancer Valley”

Date

2023-01-01

Author

Karagence, Mediha Didem
Dolcerocca, Antoıne

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Air pollution has been plaguing Dilovası dwellers for more than two decades, and the proximity of large industrial facilities with residential areas has been associated with a strong prevalence of cancer among residents of the neighborhood, sometimes dubbed as “Cancer Valley” in Turkish Media. Following original ethnographic research conducted in 2021, this study exposes the history of the neighborhood: why people moved there, how did it become one of the largest industrial hubs in Turkey, and what sort of transformation did it undergo over the last decades. Additionally, it examines how Dilovası residents experience and understand their toxic environment and its consequences, and how they relate to political and social action against pollution. This research, grounded in environmental justice literature, shows that, as both economic opportunities and environmental conditions started to degrade simultaneously in the 1990s, the more modest households of Dilovası were unable to leave and accepted to endure the pollution in exchange for the promise to secure an industrial job for them or their children.

Subject Keywords

Dilovası, Economic migration, environmental justice, health hazards, Istanbul, low-income communities, pollution, Turkey, unregulated industry

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85159081830&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/103403

Collections

Department of Sociology, Article