Understanding lived experiences of food insecurity through a paraliminality lens

This article examines lived experiences of food insecurity in the United Kingdom as aliminal phenomenon. Our research is set within the context of austerity measures, welfarereform and the precarity experienced by increasing numbers of individuals. Drawing onoriginal qualitative data, we highlight diverse food insecurity experiences as transitional,oscillating between phases of everyday food access to requiring supplementary food, whichare both empowering and reinforcing of food insecurity. We make three originalcontributions to existing research on food insecurity. First, we expand the scope of empiricalresearch by conceptualising food insecurity as liminal. Second, we illuminate shared socialprocesses and practices that intersect individual agency and structure, co-constructingpeople’s experiences of food insecurity. Third, we extend liminality theory byconceptualising paraliminality, a hybrid of liminal and liminoid phenomena that co-generatesa persistent liminal state. Finally, we highlight policy implications that go beyond short-termemergency food access measures