Project

Understanding dignity of food aid receivers in Europe

Food insecurity in Europe is a substantial problem. While food banks help food-insecure households put food on the table, several scholars have attested that charitable food aid can violate receivers’ dignity. Factors deemed responsible for such negative effects are the repurposing of food waste, not providing product choice, and maintaining giver–receiver hierarchies in interactions. Meanwhile, food banks are changing their format and new third-sector initiatives have emerged throughout Europe trying to provide a non-stigmatizing, dignified approach to food aid. However, there is limited understanding of what exactly jeopardizes dignity in the context of food aid.

The objectives of this project are:

  • Combine theories of dignity, charity, consumption, solidarity, and autonomy to frame third-sector food aid initiatives.
  • Develop a methodology for assessing dignity in food aid settings.
  • Use theories of charitable giving, consumption, moral economy, and relational autonomy to understand how various food aid initiatives affect the social dignity of receivers.
  • Develop recommendations for food aid organisations to protect the social dignity of food aid receivers.

Ethnographic, multimethod research has been conducted in three case studies to reach these objectives. All of the case studies align with a trend in Europe that aims to transform the provision of food aid by enabling food-insecure people to perform common practices associated with consumer societies, such as choosing products and paying for goods. These are a social supermarket, a food bank with a shop setting, and an initiative where food-insecure households receive a weekly charitable budget on a debit card to purchase ‘healthy’ food products at regular stores. The most recent case was featured in the Dutch national news: Geen voedselbank maar geld voor eigen boodschappen: 'Als een normale Nederlander' (nos.nl). 

The project has already resulted in several publications: