(Un)Just Transitions: Labor, Resource Nationalism, and Climate Skepticism Amidst an Unplanned Exit from Coal
What does a “green transition” look like where there is little transition planning and the institutions expected to make it just are largely absent? Focusing on Ermenek, a mining town in southern Turkey undergoing an unplanned coal exit since 2014, this project examines how workers, households, and communities navigate the social and economic afterlives of extraction. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research conducted in collaboration with the Center for Spatial Justice, the project examines how livelihood insecurity, attachments to coal, resource nationalism, and climate skepticism shape responses to decarbonization. By shifting attention from planned transition prescriptions designed for places where strong unions and climate actors exit to the messy afterlives of extraction on the European periphery, the project seeks to rethink just transition as a contested social and political process rather than primarily a policy framework. Initial fieldwork supported by the European Climate Foundation, the project is now being developed at ZMO through an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship.