“So What’s Gonna Happen Next? How Is This Going To Help Us?”: Reflections from an Ethnographic Study on Emergency Food Parcels and Household Dietary Practices in England

The widespread use of food banks in the UK is a key indicator of both food insecurity and the inadequacies of social safety nets. While quantitative measures of food insecurity capture the scale of the issue, understanding the lived experiences of individuals navigating food bank systems provides a deeper, more nuanced perspective. This paper draws on a multi-method qualitative PhD study in two urban areas that investigated the extent to which emergency food parcels intersect with household dietary practices. It reflects upon methodological considerations of conducting interviews and ethnographic observations with stigmatised and vulnerable communities against the backdrop of a global pandemic and social distancing measures. Particularly, the paper draws attention to ethical complexities of researcher-participant dynamics, where the researcher only experiences the precarity of aid contexts intermittently and can leave the field to return to their everyday life. Participants, on the other hand, remain situated in these contexts, navigating the challenging realities under investigation. As a result, it is difficult to balance the expectations of those in crisis, who are consumed by immediacy, with the elongated timescales and distal impact that often characterises the research process. Reflections also explore the intricacies of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in food banks, utilising Participatory Action Research and insider–outsider positionality as guiding frameworks. By examining shifting positionality and relational dynamics in the field, the paper highlights issues of power, trust, and responsibility in research with vulnerable communities or stigmatised environments.