Managing Food Insecurity: A Typology of Multiply-Marginalized Student Navigational Strategies

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 3:35 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Supporting Low-Income and First-Generation Students (Table 4)

Abstract

Struggling to pay for food in college (i.e., food insecurity) can constrain social and academic opportunity for multiply-marginalized students at four-year universities. However, an asset-based approach shifts the focus away from limitations only and toward students’ own pursuit of aims, or “cares,” despite or even through personal and structural constraints. In this qualitative study of 35 multiply-marginalized food insecure students at three selective, normatively affluent universities, we focus on the ways participants managed their resource limitations to pursue their educational and professional priorities. The result is the Campus Navigation Strategies Typology, or categories that expose patterns in how students prioritize their time and resources given their opportunities and constraints.

Authors

• Nathan F. Alleman, Baylor University

• Cara Cliburn Allen, Center for Nutrition and Health Impact

• Sarah E. Madsen, Baylor University