Gendering environmental insecurity: the case of Serbia

Abstract

This research project aims to contribute to the theoretical literature on Critical, Feminist, Environmental, and Human Security Studies by synthesizing the approaches and applying them to the case study of Serbia. This thesis will “broaden” and “deepen” the agenda of Security Studies by considering environmental degradation as a human security threat through the lens of post-structural Feminism. Semi-structured interviews with female environmental activists and document analysis have been used to gather data, on the basis of which key concepts have been developed using Grounded Theory (GT) methodology. These concepts will be used to answer the research question: What processes contribute to women’s environmental insecurity in Serbia? The data revealed the existence of security-enhancing processes and security-degrading factors that interact to create a situation of environmental human insecurity for women living in Serbia. Security-degrading factors existing at the political and societal level currently severely impede the capacity of nascent processes to enhance women’s environmental security. The results of this study will contribute to a scholarly understanding of the gendered dimensions of environmental insecurity, often rendered invisible in Security Studies. It will also supplement existing research on climate change and pollution, typically confined to the Global South, by using a case study from the Western Balkans, a region currently experiencing extreme environmental issues.