THE SLUMS OF ASPEN: IMMIGRANTS VS THE ENVIRONMENT IN AMERICA’S EDEN by Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Pellow
Review by Isabelle Anguelovski, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
In this book Park and Pellow explore environmental privilege in relation to the international flow of goods, services, and people and to the exacerbation of poverty and exclusion.
The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants Vs the Environment in America’s Eden, by Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Pellow, New York University Press, 275pp
Much of the extensive literature on environmental justice has examined inequities in exposure to contamination. Historically, minorities and low-income populations have suffered from greater environmental harm from waste sites, incinerators, refineries, transportation, and small-area sources than white and well-off communities. However, inequalities exist not only in the distribution of environmental ills. They are also manifested in the territorial allocation of environmental goods and services, including parks, coasts, and open spaces, which scholars have recently started to pay more attention to.
In The Slums of Aspen, sociologists Lisa Park and David Pellow examine the flip side of environmental burden: environmental privilege. In Aspen, Colorado, the authors show how a municipal resolution from 1999—under the discourse of environmental protection and embodying nativist claims of population growth through immigration being responsible for environmental degradation—attempted to limit immigration and eliminate Latino immigrants from the seemingly serene and pristine landscape of Aspen. The power of Pellow and Park’s fine, in-depth and nuanced qualitative study is to show that wealthier and white groups are actually able to enjoy natural areas like Aspen thanks to the invisible work of immigrant and poor workers, whom they in turn accuse of damaging natural resources and attempt to exclude from spaces of environmental privilege.
In this book, Pellow and Park portray two different worlds: the world of Saudi princes and American millionaires living in their 6,000 square foot mansions with heated driveways and consuming an absurd amount of resources and energy, and the one of Latino immigrants hidden in small trailers 100 miles away from the exclusive resort, but working daily to maintain the lifestyle of Aspen’s residents and visitors. The Slums of Aspen thus raises two fundamental questions: who is actually responsible for environmental damage and resource depletion? And how does the international flow of goods, services, and people contribute to this environmental state and to the exacerbation of poverty and exclusion?
