Migrants’ food security amidst the changing COVID-19 containment measures in urban China

Zhenzhong Si and Taiyang Zhong

Chapter 30 in Handbook of Research on Migration, COVID-19 and Cities, 2025, pp 541-555 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: COVID-19 exacerbated the economic, social, and political vulnerabilities of migrants and increased their food insecurity in cities of the Global South. Compared to residents, migrants are more food insecure due to their limited access to resources. Based on a secondary literature review and an online survey conducted in Wuhan and Nanjing in 2020, this chapter illustrates the four major phases of China's COVID-19 containment policies, shifting from lockdown measures to the “dynamic zero-COVID policy”. The chapter argues that migrants experienced pandemic-induced food access challenges differently from their local counterparts, demonstrating a higher level of food insecurity due to increased food expenditure, restricted mobility, and income loss. Furthermore, while it was the impact of COVID-19 that caused an increase in food insecurity, food insecurity has been entrenched following the downturn of the economy. Therefore, improving migrants’ food security demands structural changes with the aim of generating economic opportunities.

Keywords: Migrants; Food Security; COVID-19 Pandemic; Precarity; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035301225
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035301232.00041 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21950_30

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().