College Student Perspectives of Food Insecurity during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Photo-Elicitation Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

Food insecurity is a phenomenon with vast and deep implications on a college student’s personal and academic experience. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, some college students faced exacerbated food insecurity due to campus closings, fluctuating hours and availability of food options on campus, shifting living arrangements (e.g., limited or no on campus housing), and a global economic recession. Previous scholarship has primarily focused research from the perspective of the student at one point in time without consideration of social identities within political and historical contexts. Employing narrative inquiry and photo elicitation through the lens of intersectionality theory, this study will examine marginalized college student experiences with food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the inquiry seeks to explore how intersecting social identities of students influenced internal and external campus support systems, perceptions of food insecurity on academic performance, and higher education’s general response to the twin crises of a global pandemic and college student food insecurity. This research will extend existing knowledge of the lived experiences of food insecure college students and provide insight on the inequities encountered through higher education’s power systems, policies, and practices during the pandemic.