Exploring realities of food security: Oral accounts of migrant workers in urban India

Abstract

Traditional approaches of food security largely draw from neoliberal prescriptions, which focus on supply side issues of improving productivity and efficiency through market mechanisms. Reflections on the oral accounts of 30 migrants from eastern India to the capital city of Gujarat, India, provide two important insights regarding food security related issues. First, in terms of the lived realities of these migrants, traditional approaches of food security are inadequate to address their concerns as they exacerbate their food related vulnerabilities. Second, economic democracy and food sovereignty approaches are more helpful in addressing food related vulnerabilities as these approaches engage more comprehensively with the multidimensional socioeconomic vulnerabilities of the migrants from the perspective of equity and justice.