Dreaming Big in Polluted Neighborhoods? Environmental Injustice and Unequal Returns to Hope

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Environmental Inequality & Toxic Exposure

Abstract

Environmental justice research shows that environmental burdens are not randomly distributed, but are patterned by race, class, and political power, leaving many low-income communities of color living in polluted riskscapes of toxic facilities, poor air quality, and degraded local ecologies. Everyday life is nevertheless awash with exhortations to ‘dream big,’ and sociological, anthropological, and economic research typically treats hopeful views of the future as universally beneficial or at worst harmless. We bring these literatures into conversation by asking how environmental injustice conditions the returns to hope. Using MIDUS, a nationally representative, longitudinal US sample, we track the consequences of future expectations for earnings, depression, life satisfaction, and mortality over more than two decades across differently advantaged neighborhoods. A central contribution is to theorize neighborhood quality not only in socioeconomic and institutional terms, but also in environmental terms as unevenly distributed exposure to pollution and other environmental risks. We therefore assess who can realistically aspire in environmentally marginalized communities, what those aspirations look like, and when ‘dreaming big’ becomes especially costly.

Authors

• Ioana Sendroiu, University of Hong Kong

• Elsinore Kuo, Northwestern University

• Laura Upenieks, Baylor University