• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of TUScholarShareCommunitiesDateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsGenresThis CollectionDateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsGenres

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Help

    AboutPeoplePoliciesHelp for DepositorsData DepositFAQs

    Statistics

    Most Popular ItemsStatistics by CountryMost Popular Authors

    Connecting for survival: Understanding the spatial implications of migrant women's food insecurity coping strategies in Medellin, Colombia, and Washington, DC

    • CSV
    • RefMan
    • EndNote
    • BibTex
    • RefWorks
    Thumbnail
    Name:
    Hammelman_temple_0225E_12438.pdf
    Size:
    3.205Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    Download
    Genre
    Thesis/Dissertation
    Date
    2016
    Author
    Hammelman, Colleen
    Advisor
    Hayes-Conroy, Allison, 1981-
    Committee member
    Gilbert, Melissa R.
    Pearsall, Charlyn
    Graddy-Lovelace, Garrett
    Levine, Judith Adrienne, 1965-
    Department
    Geography
    Subject
    Geography
    Urban Planning
    Colombia
    Female Migrants
    Food Security
    Mobility
    Social Networks
    Washington
    Dc
    Permanent link to this record
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/1377
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/1359
    Abstract
    Women worldwide carry out strategies to support themselves and their families that rely on connecting to physical resources, especially food, and to important social ties. This dissertation provides a nuanced understanding of the spatial implications of this connectivity as made visible through mobility and social networks in two cities. Everyday experiences of food security can be bolstered by access to greater mobility (e.g., access to a taxi/bus to go to the central market), which can be provided through social networks (e.g., sharing a ride with a family member or neighbor). At the same time, a lack of mobility may inhibit a person’s access to food (e.g., an inability to move beyond one’s neighborhood due to risk of violence), and is especially true when this need for mobility interferes with other social network obligations (e.g., needing to care for children). This mixed-methods research uses sketch mapping during in-depth interviews with 72 migrant women coping with food insecurity in Medellín, Colombia, and Washington, DC, USA. Based on this data, I use relational poverty’s emphasis on social relations to explain that food insecurity results from global political economic systems, especially a capitalist, corporate food regime (chapter 3). However, in moving beyond structural explanations, this dissertation also illustrates everyday survival strategies – such as relying on informal social networks – that act as resistance to these processes (chapter 4), are both social and mobile – for example, traveling with members of social networks to access emergency food providers (chapter 5), and are impacted locally by urban planning policies reflecting global norms (chapter 6). In doing so, this dissertation argues that food insecure individuals are powerful agents carrying out creative coping strategies that are constrained by political economic structures. Building on theoretical foundations from critical food studies, urban geography and feminist geography, this research contributes to these literatures through theorizing structure and agency dynamics evident in food insecurity, particularly from the perspective of those coping with food insecurity. It is important to attend to their complex, lived experience in order to better understand if strategies for alleviating food insecurity are appropriate. Additionally, focusing on different contexts of food insecurity allows illustrating how cities are similarly and differently integrated into globalized processes influencing experiences of poverty and governance in both the global north and south. It also contributes a more nuanced understanding of the food insecurity experiences of low-income women migrating into urban environments, enabling more effective scholarship as well as improved policy making and service provision by governments, relief agencies, and community organizations. For example, this dissertation provides critiques of policy approaches that singularly focus on increasing opportunities for consumption (chapters 3 and 5) and nutrition education programs emphasizing the ‘right’ kinds of consumption (chapters 4 and 5). These policy approaches ignore the structural causes of food insecurity (chapter 3) and the nutritional knowledge of food insecure migrants (chapter 4). Instead, I argue for policies and programs to be created with a better understanding of the lived experience of those they seek to support. This includes valuing their critiques of political economic systems (chapter 4), supporting their non-economic survival strategies – such as exchange in informal networks (chapters 4 and 5) and growing food (chapter 6), and increasing flexibility to accommodate ‘non-traditional’ mobility and (informal) work situations.
    ADA compliance
    For Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation, including help with reading this content, please contact scholarshare@temple.edu
    Collections
    Theses and Dissertations

    entitlement

     
    DSpace software (copyright © 2002 - 2023)  DuraSpace
    Temple University Libraries | 1900 N. 13th Street | Philadelphia, PA 19122
    (215) 204-8212 | scholarshare@temple.edu
    Open Repository is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
     

    Export search results

    The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

    By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

    After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.