Addressing Food Insecurity in the Time of COVID-19: Physical Distance and Social Relations
In the province of Quebec, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 has rapidly brought food insecurity to the fore. While already well established and documented, the pandemic brought it to an unprecedented scale. Pre-pandemic, the literature on organization and social and community support already revealed a prevalence of an organizational response focusing on emergency aid. Consequently, such heavy reliance on philanthropy and ex-post action means that the response to food insecurity overlooks large parts of its experience, for example the fact that in Canada, the majority of households concerned does not use them, or that these services can perpetuate the stigma and the feelings of shame that often accompanies it. In this context, we aimed to study the issues encountered by front-line actors and workers in response to food insecurity in Quebec City in the summer 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this effect, we propose a conceptual framework where the emergency food aid is gauged against a critique of the dominant neoliberal response to social problems. We conducted our critical analysis on qualitative data collected with about thirty community actors, which touches upon challenges met during the pandemic, the organisational response and the strategies put forward to overcome difficulties. We conclude by exploring the role of social relations in the response to food insecurity.