Families and Food in Hard Times: European Comparative Research

Food is fundamental to health and social participation, yet food poverty has increased in the global North. Adopting a realist ontology and taking a comparative case approach, Families and Food in Hard Times addresses the global problem of economic retrenchment and how those most affected are those with the least resources. Based on research carried out with low-income families with children aged 11-15, this timely book examines food poverty in the UK, Portugal and Norway in the decade following the 2008 financial crisis. It examines the resources to which families have access in relation to public policies, local institutions and kinship and friendship networks, and how they intersect. Through ‘thick description’ of families’ everyday lives, it explores the ways in which low income impacts upon practices of household food provisioning, the types of formal and informal support on which families draw to get by, the provision and role of school meals in children’s lives, and the constraints upon families’ social participation involving food. Providing extensive and intensive knowledge concerning the conditions and experiences of low-income parents as they endeavour to feed their families, as well as children’s perspectives of food and eating in the context of low income, the book also draws on the European social science literature on food and families to shed light on the causes and consequences of food poverty in austerity Europe

Experiences of food poverty among undocumented parents with children in three European countries: a multi-level research strategy

A growing literature addresses undocumented migrants in different countries, with governmental exclusion from welfare and health services a common theme. However, little is known comparatively about the difference social context makes to the resources available to these migrants in different circumstances or how they manage and experience material deprivation and social exclusion. Adopting a realist approach, this paper draws on a comparative study that examined food poverty in low-income families with children aged 11–15 years in the UK, Portugal and Norway following the 2008 financial crisis. It shows the ways in which the study’s multi-tiered research design enabled the analysis of the complex conditions in which parents sought to sustain and feed their families. Undocumented migrants living in extreme conditions constitute ‘test cases’ for examining the specific resources available (or not) to households in different layers of context and the consequences for the ways in which food and food poverty were experienced by children and parents in these contexts. The paper thus contributes to the methodological literature on comparative research, in particular to research design in the field of migration and to knowledge about an under-researched group in an increasingly hostile Europe

Front Matter

Includes Acknowledgement from Jennifer E. Brannen & Serena R. Wheaton, Co-Editors-In-Chie

Eating with Friends, Family or Not at All: Young People's Experiences of Food Poverty in the UK

The paper draws on findings from a study called ‘Families and Food in Hard Times’, which is examining food poverty among children and families in three European countries. In the UK, qualitative interviews were carried out with 45 11–15 year olds and their parents or carers. Young people's narratives reveal food poverty as a multi-dimensional experience, including hunger, poor quality food and social exclusion. Analysis suggests a limited degree of sharing of food between young people and how they contribute to the family's management of food practices in constrained circumstances. Generally young people contest the dominant discourses which blame food poverty on individuals and families

Generational research: between historical and sociological imaginations

This paper reflects on Julia Brannen’s contribution to the development of theory and methods for intergenerational research. The discussion is contextualised within a contemporary ‘turn to time’ within sociology, involving tensions and synergies between sociological and historical imagination. These questions are informed by a juxtaposition of Brannen’s four-generation study of family change and social historian Angela Davis’s exploration women and the family in England between 1945 and 2000. These two studies give rise to complementary findings, yet have distinctive orientations towards the status and treatment of sources, the role of geography in research design and limits of generalisatio

Spin Path Integrals and Generations

The spin of a free electron is stable but its position is not. Recent quantum information research by G. Svetlichny, J. Tolar, and G. Chadzitaskos have shown that the Feynman \emph{position} path integral can be mathematically defined as a product of incompatible states; that is, as a product of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs). Since the more common use of MUBs is in finite dimensional Hilbert spaces, this raises the question "what happens when \emph{spin} path integrals are computed over products of MUBs?" Such an assumption makes spin no longer stable. We show that the usual spin-1/2 is obtained in the long-time limit in three orthogonal solutions that we associate with the three elementary particle generations. We give applications to the masses of the elementary leptons.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures, accepted at Foundations of Physic