JOURNAL ARTICLES
2023
The Nanjing Model: Comprehensive Food System Governance, Localization and Urban Food Security in China
September 1, 2023
Food supply localization has been extensively studied and advocated in North America and Europe, focusing on its oppositional stance to food system globalization, long food supply chains, the disconnect between producers and consumers, and a desire to reconnect urban consumers with small farmers in the hinterland of cities. The Northern…
Heterogeneity Among Merchants in Mexico City’s Municipal Markets
August 1, 2023
In the last decade and after nearly half a century of neglect, Mexico City’s public markets have once again made their appearance on the urban agenda, both in terms of policy and academic studies. This article, drawn on ethnographic fieldwork with merchants in three public markets, contributes to the burgeoning…
Governing for Food Security During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Wuhan and Nanjing, China
June 2, 2023
The global COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a range of public health governance responses. One common result has been an associated disruption of food supply chains and growing urban food insecurity. Policy responses to this situation have not yet received sufficient research attention. This paper therefore focuses on the urban food…
Migración en contexto de pandemia: las respuestas políticas en el Ecuador
May 5, 2023
Venezuelan migration is the largest exodus in the contemporary history of Latin America, characterized by complex issues, including precarious living conditions in Venezuela. Ecuador is a main destination country for Venezuelan migration. Leading up to and during and beyond the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ecuador faces a socioeconomic crisis,…
Urban Food Insecurity and the Impact of China’s Affordable Food Shop (AFS) Program: A Case Study of Nanjing City
May 1, 2023
Food subsidies are widely implemented as part of government policies globally to mitigate food insecurity amongst the urban poor. Subsidies to retail outlets are one a type of supply-side subsidy designed to make food more affordable to low-income consumers. China’s Affordable Food Shop (AFS) program introduced by the central government…
Migrant Networks, Food Remittances, and Zimbabweans in Cape Town: A Social Media Perspective
April 1, 2023
This study examines the evolving connection between migrant networking on social media and cross-border food remittances in Southern Africa. Emerging research and academic debates have shown that social media platforms transform migration networks. But the role and link between migrant remittances and social media are generally overlooked and neglected. This…
Did Household Income Loss Have an Immediate Impact on Animal-Source Foods Consumption during the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic?
March 27, 2023
The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 caused extensive impact on household income and foods consumption. However, little attention has been paid to the immediate impact of income loss on animal-source foods consumption in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to narrow this gap, and a total…
When Food is Finance: Seeking Global Justice for Migrant Workers
March 26, 2023
The steady growth of international labour mobility has been one of the defining features of globalization. Alongside the liberalization of international trade, labour mobility has been a key dynamic propelling economic development in the new millennium. In recent years, migrant labour is increasingly regulated via temporary schemes, deepening and widening…
The Threat of COVID-19 on Food Security: A Modelling Perspective of Scenarios in the Informal Settlements in Windhoek
March 21, 2023
Due to the heterogeneity among households across locations, predicting the impacts of stay-at-home mitigation and lockdown strategies for COVID-19 control is crucial. In this study, we quantitatively assessed the effects of the Namibia government’s lockdown control measures on food insecurity in urban informal settlements with a focus on Windhoek, Namibia….
Food Insecurity and Dietary Deprivation: Migrant Households in Nairobi, Kenya
February 28, 2023
The current study focuses on food consumption and dietary diversity among internal migrant households in Kenya using data from a city-wide household survey of Nairobi conducted in 2018. The paper examined whether migrant households are more likely to experience inferior diets, low dietary diversity, and increased dietary deprivation than their…
Venezuelan Migration, COVID-19 and Food (In)Security in Urban Areas of Ecuador
February 20, 2023
The forced migration of nearly 6 million Venezuelans is a global issue that is transforming urban contexts, particularly in Latin America. Ecuador is the third main recipient country of displaced Venezuelans. The lack of State migration policies and the deteriorating economic situation throughout the region have had significant impacts on…
COVID-19 and Urban Food Security in Ghana During the Third Wave
February 17, 2023
While the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on household food security have been documented, the intensity and forms of food insecurity in urban households in the Global South have not been adequately explored. This is despite the emerging consensus that impacts of the pandemic were more severe in urban than…
Opportunity and Survival in the Urban Informal Food Sector of Namibia
February 2, 2023
Literature on participation in the informal food sector in cities of the Global South is conventionally characterized by a survivalist or opportunistic perspective. The main difference is that opportunists, in contrast to survivalists, are motivated by entrepreneurial choice rather than necessity and see opportunities for economic and social advancement in…
Impacts of Community-Level Grassroots Organizations on Household Food Security During the COVID-19 Epidemic Period in China
February 1, 2023
Purchasing food via community-level grassroots organizations was a new pattern of food patronage for Wuhan residents during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, but little attention was paid to it. The study examined the relationship between community-level grassroots organizations and household food insecurity based on an online survey of household food insecurity in…
2022
Pathways to Food Insecurity: Migration, Hukou and COVID-19 in Nanjing, China
December 30, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has issued significant challenges to food systems and the food security of migrants in cities. In China, there have been no studies to date focusing on the food security of migrants during the pandemic. To fill this gap, an online questionnaire survey of food security in Nanjing…
Insecure Infrastructures: The Affects and Effects of Violence in Mexico’s Food System
December 28, 2022
This article puts into dialogue anthropological discussions on violence, infrastructures, food systems, and affect to argue for the importance of understanding the role of affective responses in shaping not only subjectivities or experiences of individuals but also the networks, infrastructures, and institutions in which they participate. Set in contemporary Mexico,…
Cross-Border Food Remittances and Mobile Transfers: The Experiences of Zimbabwean Migrants in Cape Town, South Africa
December 27, 2022
Mobile transfers have become a defining feature of cross-border remittance transmission in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, recent studies on mobile transfers have mainly focused on cash remittances and need to pay more attention to mobile food transfers. This paper addresses this research gap on mobile food transfers by examining cross-border…
Boon or Bane? Urban Food Security and Online Food Purchasing during the COVID-19 Epidemic in Nanjing, China
June 19, 2022
This paper examines the relationship between the rapid growth of online food purchasing and household food security during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in China using the city of Nanjing as a case study. The paper presents the results of an online survey of 968 households in Nanjing…
Les supermarchés au Mexique et dans la Zone Métropolitaine de Mexico
May 16, 2022
The article analyses the logics of expansion and spatial distribution of supermarkets at three scales: global, national (Mexico), and especially metropolitan (Mexico City), from rich to poor spaces and social categories. It seeks to understand how supermarkets, in a country like Mexico where they initially target mainly the middle class,…
The Household Food Security Implications of Disrupted Access to Basic Services in Five Cities in the Global South
April 28, 2022
COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions regarding the extent to which households can access basic services and resources in cities around the world. Previous studies have indicated a predictive relationship between the consistency of resource access and food access among urban households. These investigations, however, have predominantly been isolated to Southern…
African Migrants toward Inclusive Growth in Mozambique: A case study of the city of Maputo
February 1, 2022
Migration African scholars have argued that the Migration of Africans is occurring within the continent. That Migration can either be intra-regional or inter-regional. South Africa and Northern Africa constitute the core for all African immigration flows; the so-called intra-immigration is made of migration chains such as within the Maghreb region,…
2021
Reflections on Intersectionality: A Journey Through the Worlds of Migration Research, Policy and Advocacy
November 15, 2021
The term ‘intersectionality’ is usually attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar, who coined the term in 1989. In this paper, we reflect on how the concept has travelled through both space and time. We trace the longer history and more complex geography of intersectional approaches rooted in grassroots women’s…
Preparing for COVID-19: Household Food Insecurity and Vulnerability to Shocks in Nairobi, Kenya
November 11, 2021
An understanding of the types of shocks that disrupt and negatively impact urban household food security is of critical importance to develop relevant and targeted food security emergency preparedness policies and responses, a fact magnified by the current COVID-19 pandemic. This gap is addressed by the current study which draws…
Revisiting China’s Supermarket Revolution: Complementarity and Co-Evolution between Traditional and Modern Food Outlets
November 1, 2021
Like many emerging economies in the Global South, China is experiencing major transformations of its national and local food system characterized by the rise of supermarkets. There has been an ongoing debate on the relationship between supermarkets and wet markets in developing countries. Drawing on data from a city-wide supermarket…
Comprehensive Food System Planning for Urban Food Security in Nanjing, China
October 15, 2021
Food system planning is important to achieve the goal of “zero hunger” in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2016). However, discussion about comprehensive planning for food security is scarce and little is known about the situation in Chinese cities. To narrow this gap, this study collected and…
Migration, Rural–Urban Connectivity, and Food Remittances in Kenya
September 7, 2021
This paper draws on data from a representative city-wide household food security survey of Nairobi conducted in 2017 to examine the importance of food remitting to households in contemporary Nairobi. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the urbanization and rapid growth of Nairobi, which has led…
Emergency Food Supplies and Food Security in Wuhan and Nanjing, China, During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Survey
July 2, 2021
Motivation Detailed empirical work on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security is scant. Local management of food security has received little attention. Purpose This article describes emergency food policies in Wuhan and Nanjing, China during lockdown in 2020 and their implications for household food security in the…
Food Insecurity, Dietary Patterns and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Windhoek, Namibia
April 6, 2021
This paper investigates the relationship between dietary patterns and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Windhoek based on data from a cross-sectional random sample of 863 households. We identify three major dietary patterns: starch–sugar–oil, fruits–vegetables, and meat–fish, which explain more than 43% of the variation in food consumption. High uptake levels of…
Factors Determining Household-Level Food Insecurity During COVID-19 Epidemic: A Case of Wuhan, China
March 8, 2021
Background: In coping with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, cities adopted social isolation and lockdown measures; however, little is known about the impacts of these restrictions on household food security. Objective: This study provides a timely assessment of household food insecurity (HFI) in the Chinese city of Wuhan during the COVID-19…
Street Food as Infrastructure: Consumer Mobility and Food Security in Mexico City
February 4, 2021
Street food vendors are a ubiquitous but controversial feature of Mexico City’s foodscapes; in the context of urban renewal and modernization projects, vendors are frequently portrayed as backwards, dirty, and undesirable and are targeted for removal. While most studies of such processes focus on the implications for vendors themselves, this…