Emotional scale jumping: How emotional responses to food insecurity change private and public spaces in Havana, Cuba

Global food crises force more people into food insecurity. While numerous studies offer valuable insights into household consumption, food access, and adaptive strategies, they often overlook how food insecurity is an inherently emotional experience, deeply connected to—and continuously interacting with—broader sociopolitical dynamics. Consequently, scholars pay insufficient attention to how emotional responses to food insecurity reshape space, place, and drive sociopolitical change. Drawing on insights from emotional geography, this paper explores the emotional dimension of food insecurity, recognizing how it is shaped by sociocultural relations, perceptions of inequality, and narratives of injustice. Focusing on the food crisis in Havana, Cuba, this study takes an ethnographic approach to reveal that emotional responses to food insecurity impact (1) individual and social experiences of food consumption, (2) perceptions, experiences, and use of public space, (3) individual and collective perceptions of identity, and (4) power dynamics and perceived government legitimacy. This leads to significant sociopolitical and spatial changes at the household, urban, and national levels. We conclude that an emotional lens to food insecurity provides essential insights into how personal, yet socially shaped, emotions spill over from the household level to “jumping scales” and catalyzing broader sociopolitical change. • Emotional responses to food insecurity lead to more stressful and lonelier experiences of the home. • Emotional responses to food insecurity lead to emptier and perceived unsafe public spaces. • Emotional responses to food insecurity jump scales to influence broader sociopolitical dynamics. • Migration can be seen as a form of collective protest.