FOOD INSECURITY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Date
2024-08-26
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Food insecurity has become a growing issue for many Canadian subpopulations. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in March of 2020, many food-insecure households and individuals were unable to use previously relied-upon services or practises to ease their struggles with food insecurity. This case study focuses on post-secondary students as one disproportionately affected subgroup and uses a critical ethnographic approach paired with an autoethnographic lens to explore the experiences of food insecurity within the population during the pandemic. Drawing on one-on-one interviews and interrogation of her own lived experiences, the researcher draws out the complex, comingled, and often painful realities of food insecurity in the lives of university students. Participants’ struggles to obtain sustenance and their compulsion to minimize the difficulties they face was explored through discussion of matters that particularly affect post-secondary students at the University of Saskatchewan. Combining these intimate interviews with the first-person accounts and reflections of the researcher, who also struggled with food insecurity, resulted in a multiplicative enrichment to the analysis and depth of understanding. The interviewees openly shared their views and perspectives on their distressing experiences struggling with food access during a difficult period in history and painted a somewhat dismal picture of the challenges faced by students. However, despite the critiques they offer of structural barriers, neglect, and inadequate supports, the participants and the researcher remain hopeful, and proffer ideas on how to make changes that could improve the food security of future cohorts of post-secondary students.
Description
Keywords
food insecurity, COVID-19, students
Citation
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
Sociology
Program
Sociology