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This article examines the long-term uneven production of environmental and social justice affecting Roma population in the former mining locality of Rudňany, eastern Slovakia. Drawing on qualitative empirical data and archival sources, the study situates contemporary patterns of environmental exposure, socio-spatial segregation, and institutional neglect within a broader historical and political-economic framework. It demonstrates that while socialist-era industrialization and housing policies offered limited forms of social inclusion, they simultaneously reinforced structural inequalities that were subsequently reconfigured and intensified through post-socialist neoliberal and racialized restructuring. The article combines Environmental Justice Theory and Critical Race Theory to elucidate both the mechanisms of unequal exposure to ore mining legacy and the persistent absence of institutional response. The analysis further suggests epistemic asymmetries, showing how Roma experiences are marginalized within official archives and governance practices, rendering environmental degradation in Roma-inhabited areas as normalized rather than to be remedied. By foregrounding the historical embeddedness of Roma marginalization in Rudňany, the article contributes to scholarship by linking environmental harm, historical racialized exclusion, and post-socialist transformation in a single analytical framework. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ .
ŠKOBLA et al. (Fri,) studied this question.