Environmental Stress and Spatial Mobility: How Pollution Shapes Everyday Adaptations and Migration Strategies in Serbia

Environmental degradation has become a persistent feature of everyday life in many Serbian cities, where chronic exposure to polluted air, industrial emissions, and infrastructural deficits shapes how residents perceive their living environments and plan their spatial futures. While the health impacts of pollution are well documented, far less is known about the ways that environmental stress influences residential choices, intra urban mobility, and long term migration strategies. This study addresses this gap by examining how families in five highly polluted Serbian cities (Belgrade, Valjevo, Kosjerić, Smederevo, and Pančevo) interpret environmental stress and incorporate it into their mobility decisions. Drawing on five focus groups with 35 participants, the study analyzes how pollution becomes an embodied and emotional experience that restricts daily routines, generates health concerns, and produces a sense of environmental insecurity. The findings show that environmental stress triggers a continuum of adaptive responses: micro adaptations within the household, intra urban relocations to less polluted microlocations, suburban and rural moves motivated by the search for cleaner air and greater safety, and long term migration aspirations shaped by intergenerational concerns. These strategies reveal that environmental mobility is not a sudden or binary decision but a gradual, cumulative process emerging from the interplay of bodily discomfort, institutional distrust, and perceptions of future risk. The study also highlights the role of weak environmental governance in shaping mobility trajectories. When institutions are perceived as unresponsive, environmental risk becomes privatized, and mobility becomes one of the few available mechanisms of protection. By integrating perspectives from environmental stress theory, place attachment, environmental inequality, and mobility studies, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how chronic pollution reshapes spatial behavior in postsocialist contexts. The findings underscore the need for policies that strengthen environmental monitoring, improve urban planning, and rebuild institutional trust in order to reduce mobility pressures and support community resilience.