Rescaling Food Insecurity: On Eating and Feeding in Migrant Shelters

Food provisioning represents a major everyday challenge for migrant shelter administrators, workers, and volunteers, yet very little is known about the specific conditions and challenges faced by these spaces. While there is a small body of scholarly work about food in shelters from the perspective of people on the move, most of this literature is based on state-run shelters in the Global North, and there is little understanding of the challenges and conditions faced by non-state shelters in general, and by shelters in the Global South in particular. This article represents an opening for exploring these issues. Drawing on a day-long workshop conducted between a team of researchers and representatives of five migrant shelters in the Mexico City metropolitan area, the article discusses the theoretical and practical stakes of ensuring food security for migrant populations and suggests that we rescale food security to address these spaces and their struggles.