Feeding Roma families: From hunger to inequalities

Abstract

Feeding work is complex, laborious and highly gendered in some Roma families compared to the majority population. Specifically, Roma families living in poverty are frequently large and live in substandard housing that makes feeding work more complicated. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in five different Roma settlements throughout Croatia, this paper explores how Roma households that experience severe material deprivation feed their families and their everyday experiences of food in/security and hunger. This study relies on self-reported food in/security as a better measure of directly capturing how the Roma feel about their immediate situation. Likewise, it attempts to draw attention to Roma expressions of deprivation, uncertainty, or concern over access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. Based on in-depth interviews rather than just observations, this analysis provides a different perspective on meaning of feeding in the light of unprecedented financial insecurity that is experienced by many Roma families and the ensuing inequalities are analysed. Some of the ways that feeding Roma families relates to gender and the (in)equalities that surface are also discussed. Findings show that a lack of access to healthy and nutritious food aggravates health, social, educational, economic and gender inequalities that squarely places Roma at the bottom rung of the social ladder and generates social suffering. Keywords: food poverty, hunger, inequalities