No. 36: ‘Going to the Supermarket was Hard’: Pandemic Foodscapes and Unsettled Food Practices of Refugees in the Waterloo Region

In this paper, we examine how the ‘new normal’ of pandemic-living transformed the local food environment in Ontario as pandemic foodscapes. Using selected findings from mixed methods research with a small sample of recently resettled refugees in the Waterloo region, we evaluated how these changes affected their grocery shopping and food-sourcing habits. We identify the distinctive ways the pandemic-related restrictions altered our participants’ interactions with their local food environment and influenced their food availability and accessibility. Our study found that participants spent more time acquiring food from a reduced number of food sources and experienced an overall weakening of their household food security. The decline in food access and availability was most pronounced for the ethnocultural foods that immigrants and refugees preferred to consume. We offer a nuanced understanding of how the broad set of circumstances of our respondents and their household members shaped their mobility experiences about food provisioning. Most participants attempted to minimize their trips to purchase groceries due to the risk of coronavirus but were unable to do so, especially in large households. An insignificant segment of the study cohort successfully followed new adaptation modes, such as grocery delivery, because of associated costs. Moreover, vulnerable sections of our research cohort drastically limited their food provisioning and remained greatly dependent on their social networks’ assistance, generosity, and circumstances in acquiring groceries.