Wastelands. Eirik Saethre

clean water, and electricity. Detailing people’s struggles, this chapter explores how a domesticity of exception was wrought from scarcity and precarity. For instance, Ashkali collectively labored to transform shacks built from trash into respectable homes. Meanwhile, basic services had to be illicitly appropriated, which could result in arrest or electrocution. Although Polje’s residents cooperated to survive, they also demarcated family from neighbor, contributor from competitor, through food and drink. The settlement’s vulnerability was particularly evident after flooding that left the rest of the city largely unscathed. Losing what little they possessed and receiving almost no external aid, families worked to rebuild their shacks and recreate a marginalized area that was nevertheless their refuge.

      Despite their physical segregation, Polje’s residents participated in international networks by converting discarded value-laden commodities into cash. To make sense of this process, the third chapter examines the labor, embodied experience, and signification of scavenging. It follows Ashkali and Roma as they sort through dumpsters, recycle paper and metal products, sell salvaged goods at markets, beg, and engage in wage labor. Dumpsters were abject, but Ashkali earned their living and identity through these receptacles of disgust. Scavenging created a web of interactions and implicit understandings between Serbs and settlement residents. Destabilizing the boundary between private property and waste, trash-picking generated diverse but overlapping identities including the needy sufferer, the devious thief, and the entrepreneurial worker. Crucially, it transcended meaning and shaped Ashkali corporeality. Pedaling a fully loaded trokolica, stooping over dumpsters, and stacking tons of cardboard were physically debilitating. Consequently, trash work resulted in a life of pain. As Ashkali endured physical discomfort, social stigma, and economic marginalization, their afflictions were multidimensional and born out of garbage.

      Chapter 4 charts entrepreneurial aspirations by following Bekim’s efforts to achieve financial success. First, he attempted to increase his family’s income by applying for welfare. Because the steps required to receive state aid employed technologies of governance to constitute biopolitical citizens, Bekim, as a cigan, was functionally excluded. As an alternative, he hoped to increase his scavenging revenue by emulating his Romani neighbors and collecting metal via horse cart. Bekim purchased a horse but was still unable to comprehensively support his family. If welfare was a function of state sovereignty, working with horses was the domain of a localized Romani sovereignty. Consequently, Bekim’s desire to diversify his economic status was viewed as a betrayal of Ashkali values and he became increasingly estranged from these social networks. Bekim’s identity and that of the trash he scavenged were intertwined. Just as he attempted to transform materials from commodities to garbage and back again, Bekim actively manipulated his own status both within the settlement and without.

      Chapter 5 follows Ashkali as they negotiate the precarious transition out of informal settlements. Although formal accommodation boasted amenities like water and electricity, settlements provided access to important economic resources—trash—that could not be found elsewhere. For instance, state-sponsored apartments lacked storage space for recyclable paper, while container settlements and NGO-funded homes in Kosovo were situated in peri-urban and rural areas devoid of waste. On the other hand, those applying for asylum in the European Union temporarily received state benefits but were almost always repatriated to the Balkans. National and international resettlement programs, while ostensibly intended to improve housing, only succeeded in relegating Ashkali and Roma to other equally uncertain geographies. Prevailing economic, social, and political conditions ensured that spaces like Polje, although impermanent, were nevertheless enduring.

      The conclusion lays bare the fragility of life in settlements by charting what appeared to be the impending eviction of Polje as trucks began dumping dirt, broken concrete, and other rubble near people’s shacks. While Ashkali and Roma strained to cope, they were further burdened by the very people who purported to provide aid: a church group aiming to solicit donations from their American parishioners began recording emotional videos of scavengers. As Ashkali and Roma sought to scavenge resources from these interlopers, they also had to negotiate hunger, pain, violence, and death. Examining the events surrounding my final weeks in the settlement, I return to the concept of boredom. After years in Polje, I too had become bored, not with the people or the place, but with the enduring afflictions. As nights searching for food in dumpsters while attempting to avoid assault became common, I grew inured to the constant struggle. Rereading my field notes while preparing this manuscript, I was struck by the number of times I described being hungry, sore, and under threat. Yet, at the time, it all seemed routine and inconsequential. As a result, it is my desire to recount not only the trials that people faced but also the simple monotony of these extraordinary events.