The moral maze of food bank use

The foodbank symbolises a changing landscape of social insecurity and welfareconditionality. Attending to decision making within the food bank system, this articleargues that food banks, and their referral-system creates a bureaucratic ‘moral maze’that identifies people as ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ of help. Maintaining a moraldistance, organised religious food banks are reliant upon a complex outsourcing ofmoral decisions and walk a fine balance between supply (donations) and demand(use). Within this article, we argue that the food bank landscape is akin to navigating amoral maze, and that this creates, and thus justifies decisions of deservedness