The production of unequal risk in hazardscapes: An explanatory frame applied to disaster at the US–Mexico border

This paper advances understanding of how unequal risks to environmental hazards are generated. Marginalization is the best known explanation for the production of risk. The concept of marginalization was elaborated through studies of hazards in the global South and connotes how social inequalities constrain livelihood options of less powerful social groups. Thus, marginal groups are pressured to degrade landscapes and occupy hazardous environments while they experience decreased capacities to cope with environmental change. This paper directs analytical attention beyond the material to include the discursive realm and demonstrates that the production of unequal risk is contingent upon how hazards are differentially perceived, represented, and contested in social spaces. Findings from a flood disaster case study in the El Paso (US)–Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) border metropolis highlight how hegemonic discourses reinforce material processes of marginalization in flood-prone social spaces. Findings also reveal how socially-powerful geographical groups of people have harnessed institutional resources in their efforts to externalize risks and capitalize on environmental opportunities in some flood-prone areas. The concept of facilitation is used to explain the material-discursive production of socially-elite, flood-prone spaces. Facilitation clarifies how powerful groups are provided privileged access to institutional resources in their pursuit of environmental rewards, contributing to unjust socioenvironmental outcomes. In conclusion, I outline key aspects of how unequal risks are materially and discursively (re)produced within hazardscapes through relational processes of marginalization/facilitation.