Publicaties

The revival of food support as an anti-poverty strategy: 

Hunger as the canary in the coalmine?

Caroline Vandekinderen, Didier Reynaert, Annick Verstraete, Griet Roets

Corresponding author: Caroline.vandekinderen@ugent.be

The European Journal of Social Work

Accepted 18 Jan 2026, Published online 09 Feb 2026

https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2026.2622495

Abstract

Poverty and social inequality is a central challenge to the social justice aspirations of diverse European societies and social work is historically strongly involved in this struggle against poverty and social inequality. However, actually social protection and social security rationales resulting from welfare state orientations, have increasingly receded into the background. This resonates in changing and hybrid relationships between formal and informal social work arrangements in the welfare landscape. The emergence of “neo-philantrophy” or “new charity economy” is part of this major re-establishment in the political struggle against poverty. In this contribution, we focus on the mushrooming number of initiatives of food support in Ghent, offered as forms of emergency relief for people living in poverty. Within these practices, we explore the central fields of tensions between private and public approaches in which charity- and rights-based orientations are at play.

Keywords: poverty, new charity economy, social rights
 

Introduction

The prevalence of poverty and social inequality continues to present a central challenge to the social justice aspirations of diverse European societies (Fritzell & Ritakallio, 2010). Social work – both as an academic discipline and practice-based profession in which formal as well as informal actors have a role – has a long involvement in this struggle (Villadsen, 2007; Lorenz, 2006, 2016). 

Social work is, however, involved in the changing historically complex relationship between the state, civil society, the market, and citizens, leading to welfare state transformations which result in changing and hybrid relationships between formal and informal social work arrangements in the welfare landscape (Dean, 2015). Critical scholars have argued that there is a complex reconfiguration of the institutional and normative framework of European welfare states, with reference to a potential erosion of “government commitments in securing the welfare rights of citizens” (Garrett, 2019, p. 190). Recent research shows that an increasing group of people with the formal status of citizen falls through the cracks of the professional and rights-oriented welfare system (Dwyer, 2019). They risk to end up at the bottom rung of the ladder of citizenship, as welfare state arrangements emphasize individual responsibilities and obligations rather than mutual solidarity and social justice (Turner, 2016; De Wanckel et al., 2021). Moreover, there is a growing group of people (e.g. through intra-European and global waves of migration) who do not reach the first rung of the ladder towards basic social rights, since national welfare states embody a territorial logic in which entitlements are based on national identities and “merits” (Turner, 2016). Informal actors operating in the shadow of the welfare state often respond to these emergent needs of people with limited rights to welfare (Schrooten et al., 2019).

In that vein, critical attention in social policy and social work scholarship has emerged on issues of “neo-philanthropy” (Villadsen, 2007), “new philanthropy” (Morvaridi, 2016), or “new charity economy” (Kessl et al., 2019; Roets et al., 2024). The “new charity economy” (Kessl, 2009) describes “a distribution system in the private sphere of European societies in which basic goods – often considered to be in surplus – are distributed for free or sold at discount prices to ‘the poor’ or ‘the needy’ through voluntary helpers” in food banks, soup kitchens, clothes shops and thrift stores (Kessl et al., 2019, p. 367). Charity support has never completely disappeared from the scene, but disappointing poverty trends and welfare state limitations and transformations have paved the way for  a normative shift from social protection and security towards non-rights based practices, such as food support (Hermans et al., 2024).. Kessl et al. 2019 (p.365) however categorize this support as “new” since it results from and expresses “the transformation of the welfare state, as the expansion of such distribution economy is part of a major re-establishment in the political battle against poverty”. 

In this contribution, we discuss the research findings of a qualitative study in Ghent, a city in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, in which we examined the mushrooming number of initiatives of food support offered as forms of emergency relief for people living in poverty. These social work practices involve a wide diversity of informal partners in the welfare landscape about whom relatively little knowledge has been acquired (Debruyne & Meeus, 2018). The aim of this study is therefore to identify and discuss the different logics underlying social work’s involvement in the provision of food support in relation to its social justice orientation. 

Methodology

Research context

Our study is implemented in the City of Ghent, which is the capital of the province of East-Flanders in Belgium. This case study has strategic importance for generating innovative knowledge (see Yin, 2014) in relation to food initiatives for people in poverty for several reasons. First, Ghent has historically a well elaborated network of KRAS (Kring Rond Armoede in de Stad – circle around poverty within the city) initiatives, nowadays consisting of 18 volunteer anti-poverty organizations, of which thirteen provide food support. Many of these initiatives exist for more than 30 years and have roots in catholic inspiration, as evidenced by the original meaning of the abbreviation KRAS, namely Kerk aan de Rand van de Stad - church on the edge of city. However, against the background of weakened public welfare services, only recently this long-term established actor collaborates much closer with the local government (as we will illustrate in the findings). Moreover, Ghent counts seven social restaurants which organize activation and employment trajectories for vulnerable citizens and offer meals at a diminished price for people in poverty. Furthermore, since March 2017, the Public Centre for Social Welfare (PCSW) and the City of Ghent have established a logistic platform to avoid food waste by collecting and redistributing food surpluses through a social employment project. This project aims to bring more healthy, fresh food to people living in poverty and to avoid heavy CO2 emissions. Finally Ghent counts 500 citizen initiatives. Among those citizen and neighborhood initiatives, there is recently a growing interest in and engagement towards the topic of food. There are diverse soup kitchens where volunteers use food surpluses to prepare meals that are offered for a free contribution. During the COVID pandemia,  Gent Samen Solidair (Ghent together in solidarity) was established as a network organization in which some of these citizen initiatives are represented. Until today, they share expertise and information when providing emergency aid.

Strategies of data-collection: qualitative semi-structured interviews with key figures

In order to gain insight into the everyday practices that unfolds in local contexts and concrete situations, we explored the perspectives of key figures in local (poverty) policy and representatives of the diverse food initiatives in social work. 

We performed 31 semi-structured interviews (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998) which were all audio-taped and fully transcribed, including six interviews with policy makers and 25 interviews with representatives of the diverse food initiatives. The food initiatives were partly selected through snowball-sampling, since we started with the practitioners from well-known initiatives, who referred us to other initiatives which we didn’t know beforehand. In total, three interviews took place with practitioners from social restaurants, thirteen with representatives from organizations resorting under KRAS, two interviews with key figures from religiously inspired initiatives, one interview with a practitioner from a social grocery, two interviews with people involved in a citizen’s initiative and four interviews with people engaged in initiatives which do not resort under one of the other categories. Participants were informed about the knowledge ambition of the research, the voluntary nature of participation and the anonymous character of the conversation. Our research was conducted conform the institutional requirements of the ethical committee of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Ghent University. 

Strategies of data-analysis: qualitative content analysis

The data were analyzed in an exploratory and interpretative manner based on a directed approach to qualitative content analysis (Wester, 1987), defined as “any qualitative data reduction and sense making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings” (Patton, 2002, p. 453). Our analysis was crucially informed by  a conceptual frame of reference that has been developed by Maeseele (2012) and further elaborated by Roets et al. (2024) which identifies private and public approaches as part of charity- and rights-based orientations within social policy and work practices that unfold within the context of current welfare arrangements addressing poverty. 

The data were analyzed by engaging in a directed approach (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) in order to provide thick and rich descriptions of the social realities created in and normative orientations adopted by particular social work practices on the continuum of charity – rights oriented approaches. 

Findings

The findings are presented according to five analytical nodes in which the central fields of tensions between private and public approaches as part of charity- and rights-based orientations are at play.

We discuss (1) the ongoing process of the institutionalization of emergency relief and additionally (2) how an organizational logic risks to blur the needs of service users; (3) the balancing act of organizations between challenging and becoming part of (the (logic of) the formal circuit; (4) how they sometimes create surplus conditions; and (5) the potentially political role of the new charity economy actors. 

An institutionalization of emergency relief

Classic welfare settlements of the post-Second World War period emphasize citizens’ status-based entitlements to at least a minimum level of publicly funded social security benefits and welfare services (Dwyer, 2019). In Belgium, the law on the PCSW of 1976 introduced the right to social services, implying that every citizen had the right to the necessary help and support to build an existence in human dignity (De Corte et. al. 2019). This entails the institutionalization of a public and democratic social work logic and the right to human flourishing. Although the welfare state continues to play a crucial role in the arrangements to redistribute social resources and power, our study reveals that a number of vulnerable citizens slip through the net of public arrangements while it are volunteer and charity organizations that intercept them. As such, food banks have become secondary extensions of weakened social safety nets (Riches, 2022), as outlined by one of the volunteers: 

Article 1 of the PCSW states that they are the safety net for people in poverty. Butwe helped people who couldn't go to the PCSW. That was contrary to their logic. However we continued to register  which people we supported, e.g. people who were suspended or had a wage garnishment, many people who did not receive benefits before the weekend when the PCSW was closed, or their file had to be presented at the PCSW council and go through a whole procedure. While we had no procedures.

This volunteer highlights that the PCSW is mandated to support individuals living in poverty; however, as a volunteer organization, they frequently engage with individuals who are unable to access such formal assistance. Although these volunteer food support initiatives coexist with institutional forms of assistance, a process of institutionalization is ongoing by which these initiatives are gradually being recognized as part of the local welfare state system to support people in poverty (De Smedt & Vranken, 2018). For example, KRAS evolved from independent bottom-up initiatives, tolerated by the PCSW with some degree of suspicion, to partners of public services receiving (minimal) financial support.

As Schonneville (2018) already observed, there are organizational links between the charity economy and central parts of the welfare state. This connection is reflected in the fact that social workers in (public) organizations refer their clients to local food banks and material support initiatives, not seldom in situations where they are confronted with their own bureaucratic boundaries, as explained by a volunteer:

When they [from the PCSW] are at their wit's end, they send them [people in need] to us. For example there was that woman whose husband had died, her child was  recognized, but she didn’t. They became homeless,had no food and drink. According to the regulations, the child could be taken into a refuge, but not the mother since she had no papers. The PCSW got stuck in that situation, and asked us: don't you know someone or do you have options?

This particular situation is indicative for a transformation in which the charity economy has become a functional part of the welfare arrangement. As such poverty reduction is concerned as a task for civil society based on donations and voluntary work (Kessl et al., 2019). In that vein, the city of Ghent initiated a trajectory on material support, aiming at a better coordination of the mushrooming initiatives in order to guaranteeing the access to material support for every citizen. However, this might entail the risk of eroding the subjective right to human flourishing and replacing it by a guaranteeing the access to necessary material support to survive. This shift of welfare rationales might involve highly problematic and arbitrary practices, as the following strategy unveils:

People who arrive draw a ticket, a number. When they are lucky, they are among the first. But when they are at the end, there is sometimes nothing left in the store. That's  a raffle but the most fair way to organize it.

One of the pioneers of the KRAS services fiercely articulated his concern about the danger of institutionalizing the right on food support instead of the right on human flourishing – including the right to a sufficient income. This reveals the possibly shifting interpretation of “material resources” from income, housing, and mobility resources towards food, clothes and small furniture. Although we see a revival of these remedial strategies there is a strong awareness amongst the volunteers that the support of food banks and similar organizations can only alleviate the reality of poverty, but is neither capable nor aimed to fight poverty, as expressed by one of the volunteers:

You're not going to fight poverty by feeding people. But if everyone has a nice structural dream, while people are dying of hunger, that's not a solution either.

Besides the more traditional charity initiatives who originated in the eighties, based on catholic inspiration, there is an expansion of citizen’s initiatives focusing on emergency relief and food (re-)distribution, based on different logics, as explained by a policy maker:

In the civic budgets, a lot of initiatives around food have been submitted, picking up that dynamic around reuse of surplus food and sustainability as a theme. 

The underlying rationales include dominantly ecological sustainability and the idea of recycling food surpluses, but also social cohesion and health.  One of the volunteers uttered her concerns about this evolution:

There are lots of new ecological initiatives taking action against waste. For example Foodsavers, which finally enables us to provide people with fruit and vegetables. In itself, that's a good thing. But it also makes me anxious. Fear about the way that it is getting institutionalized. (...) It should not be that we keep on producing, we have surpluses and we distribute that amongst people in poverty and that replaces wages and income.

This shows that although these initiatives hold the potential of criticizing dominant food (over)production strategies, they also entail the risk that under the innovative veil of ecological sustainability, food support initiatives for people in poverty are further institutionalized and even becoming normal. In some cases, however, they are open to all citizens and evolve towards universal services rather than selective ones. 

An organizational logic blurring the needs of service users

As argued above, the food initiatives in Ghent are increasingly part of the local welfare system in which a pluralization of actors are involved in the provision of social services and welfare resources. The range of actors includes a set of different formal and informal welfare providers who all appeal to certain but varying criteria and procedures, to organize the selective access to their service or to grant a reduced rate. These criteria or procedures range between territorial boundaries, referral by (public) professional social work services, age limits, a culture pass, etc.

However, the current Ghent poverty policy plan states that the aim is to optimize referral and cooperation between the PCSW and food initiatives and to streamline the selection criteria. As such, the PCSW  - as the local public actor – positioned itself in a directing role to tune the different actors in the territory (Andreotti et al., 2012), and developed a future model for material support. The central aim was to avoid a proliferation of social services within the food initiatives as a parallel circuit to the social service of the PCSW. The stated rationale was the need for a shared vision of networking and collaboration that is publicly transparent, with reference to challenges such as logistics (e.g. for the redistribution of leftover food), referrals between public and private social work actors, funding, and territorial accessibility of the supply in terms of seven zones or clusters in the city (e.g. to prevent the “shopping” behavior of people in need), quality control of service delivery, etc., as explained by a volunteer:

That zoning is there to make sure that people don't visit three or four services at once, but that they go to the service that is closest [to the place where they live]. That there are not four social services investing time into the same person or the same family.

This reasoning with regard to the zoning reveals that their social services still exist and that the installation of the territoriality principle proofs its utility in reducing the over-querying of these social services and the volunteers by the same clients. 

However, these logics underpinning the idea of territoriality – which implies that people have to rely on the ervice that is closest to their domicile -  deny the motives and preferences of welfare recipients to visit a certain service, as they experience big differences between the organizations, both in the support offered (ranging from food support to serving full meals, offering social services, organizing socio-cultural activities) as in the amount of goods, as witnessed by a volunteer:

You have KRAS services in richer areas with 1% poverty. Others are in neighborhoods with 80% poverty. They have to put barriers because the demand is so high. KRAS services look at the family income and the amount of money left after necessary bills are paid. That scale should be the same everywhere. But that’s not the case. One [service/zone] faces much more poverty than another.

The PCSW has developed a registration tool that should be used by the civil society initiatives for the sake of transparency. Howeverr, the strong effort of the city in streamlining the private initiatives of emergency relief in order to realize  equal access might blur the precarious position of vulnerable people with regard to the realization of their social rights by volunteers. One of the initiators of the KRAS services pronounced the ambiguous position of these private organizations with regard to the duty in guaranteeing the right to support, stressing their autonomous position in the social field:

We are not an extension of the PCSW. There is often a kind of confusion. We remain an autonomous volunteer initiative. So we are in no way obliged to adopt directives from the PCSW. We also make it clear to our clients: you don't come here because you are entitled to something, but you can come here because we think you deserve support based on your humanity. You don't come here to take up your rights.

This quote illustrates that the idea of maximizing equality by directing public resources towards the most disadvantaged through residual practices might be tricky from a human rights perspective.. 

Balancing between challenging and becoming part of (the logic of) the formal circuit

While downsizing the expectations of public services and welfare recipients concerning the enforceability of rights in food support initiatives, the interviews revealed how rights-oriented approaches gradually emerge in charity economy practices. Many of the food support initiatives mainly identify themselves as places for detecting vulnerable people living in the shadow of public welfare services and not taking up their social rights. As such, the provision of food and material goods is perceived as a stepping stone to detect other needs, as the following quote exemplifies:

We provide 'bed-bath-bread' and meanwhile we support people living in under-protection. We provide a housing-oriented approach linked to legal support, while we support people materially, for example by giving them food.

This shows how some of the organizations offer a broad range of services going beyond the traditional food support to improve the life situation of people on a variety of domains. They inscribe welfare recipients on the waiting list of social housing companies, they take care of school bills, take the lead to obtain scholarship, facilitate the contact between the school and parents, arrange holiday camps,, enable families to travel low budget, collaborate with doctors and dentists for screening, , organize leisure activities or language courses, translate official correspondence and guide people to official services, and so on.

To capture the everyday concerns of service users, some of the volunteers try to be present in the living environment of people: 

We go on a bread round once a week. On these home visits you can discuss all kinds of things with families, for example the papers and the bills..

This volunteer aims to connect  to specific aspects or glimpses of people’s lived experiences and concerns.  Some of the volunteers highlight the need to go beyond the observable functioning of people and to engage with social injustices in the life worlds (Grunwald & Thiersch, 2009), recognizing that a person’s needs and aspirations are shaped by interactions between individuals and their social and material environments and the available resources, as aptly illustrated in the following quote: 

We were invited to a school assembly. That family was living  in a squat and the school could  not reach the parents. During the meeting, the mom was scrutinized by three  people from school. But you don't get to know much when you put vulnerable people under fire. I started a dialogue with that girl. I asked her: ‘Where did you wake up this morning?’ A squat. 'Where did you sleep yesterday? Where are you going to sleep tomorrow?' Once at a sister's house, once there. 'How many people live in that squat?' 35 'How many people have to get up at 7 a.m. to get to school on time?' Just me. 'Who made your sandwiches?' There was no bread.

This volunteer discussed the resources and the conditions (housing, education, work, income) in which people are expected to lead a dignified existence (Roose & De Bie, 2003), supporting this young girl to navigate her everyday life, and mobilizing resources and support. At the same time, he challenged public services to broaden their perspective in supporting people to realize human dignity: 

Official ones are the counter clerks and they can do something for you from here to the edge of the table. But we're on the other side of the counter and we're always challenging that counter back to widen it a little bit.

As mentioned above, many of the KRAS organizations set up their own social service to map welfare recipients’ situation on several life domains and to connect their support to the needs. However, often, this is a subtle way to encourage people to undertake steps towards so-called “active citizenship”, as clarified by a volunteer:

We have quarterly contact with people, to take a look at the situation. For example, if people are on a living wage, to check if they have been to the work store. We ask them to bring proof.  In case of legal problems, we ask if they have consulted a service. Our social service also serves to check whether people take steps to change their situation. We ask foreigners to bring the registration proof for Dutch classes.

These practices depict that, while challenging some developments within professional social work, these food initiatives run the risk of becoming an integral and instrumental part of the activation paradigm. For example, certain organizations define a three-monthly visit at their social service as an entrance ticket for the food support, as clarified by a volunteer: 

People cannot come to food distribution without being registered by our social services department and showing up on the appointment. Afterwards, they get access to food support for three months, and get another appointment [with social services] three months later. We are strict about that. Recently, we refused two visitors because they didn't show up for their appointment and didn't call. They can't get a food package.

This shows how a possibly supportive practice rooted in a lifeworld approach is transformed into a controlling one, reflecting the idea of behaving in a responsible manner.

Creating surplus conditionality

In practice, numerous unwritten rules of conduct install a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving, putting pressure on the rights-oriented nature of practice. As illustrated above, some volunteers evaluate welfare recipients' willingness to behave in accordance with the ideal of the active and responsible citizen. The so-called “laziness” of specific clientele belonging to an ethnic minority group is alluded to in the following quote: 

Belgians who come here are really needy. But Slovak, they milk the system a bit. Those young women should get education. To do something. Not to remain dependent on food distribution all their life. I have proposed at the meeting to give courses to those Slovakian young women. They don't speak a word of Dutch. These girls are 24-25 years old, they have 6 or 7 children.. You have to give them a step to get into the job market through education because they really are very low-skilled.

The importance of education and employment is rightly emphasized by this volunteer as a structural component of a poverty reduction strategy. However, this actor gives the impression that she believes that welfare recipients are unwilling to act as active citizens. This bias is also reflected in the opening hours of most food relief initiatives that are not geared to working people (Cohen et al., 2017). The beginning of the quote also insinuates (a repeatedly mentioned) suspicion of fraud and attempts to extract unearned benefits from food aid. The same logic is at work in the following quote: 

The PCSW referred a client to us, but we made a comment about that, because they were here with a BMW SUV. You know what such a car costs. So I called that assistant from the PCSW. She responded, 'I'm a sworn official and if I say they should get food, they should.' Excuse me, as a service we take care of our own food, so we can decide ourselves.

This volunteer  portrays the PCSW as an arena of deception (Cohen et al., 2017), questioning the judgment of public services and emphasizing the autonomy of one's own organization to settle discussions around the right to receive support.

Welfare recipients who express their gratitude and respect significantly increase their chances of receiving a bonus. An additional effort is also made for those in "high need”, although an exact definition remains guesswork. In any case, prioritizing needs points to a discordant dynamic. Volunteers argue that they know their clients and rely on their judgment, which requires far-reaching exposure of the private sphere. 

Moreover, the expectation of reporting an excessive emergency to volunteers may clash with the self-esteem and pride of welfare recipients, who may develop survival strategies in line with their aspirations and dignity, such as reselling second-hand clothing, a practice to which a volunteer refers: 

We used to have a book to keep track of what people took. We stopped doing that, but we still check what they take home. They may come back every three weeks, but if you take a jacket today, you cannot have a jacket next time. It are always the quick ones who take another jacket, but if they don't have it anymore, it's because they're selling it to have money.

These strategies of resale are labeled by volunteers as improper use of material resources, even when they create additional opportunities (e.g., additional financial resources) against the fragile material horizon of daily life. Moreover, whereas sustainability and health logics gain ground within the food relief field, volunteers are deploying various strategies to encourage individuals to make healthy and ecological choices. These interventions are balancing in the field of tension between care and control. Some of the volunteers provide welfare recipients with requested advice, as explained below:

A volunteer walks with them through the store and says: 'You don't forget to take fresh things?,' or 'Don’t you need milk?,' or 'I'd take less cookies’. Everyone is directed a bit, but overall they have the choice of what they want.

Other initiatives adjust their assortment in the name of health: sugar is banned and oil limited. These disciplinary practices sometimes impede equal access to certain goods, since the required financial contribution for certain products is artificially increased to discourage unhealthy choices, as argued:

We do that deliberately, asking more expensive prices for products like cake. Because otherwise they would only eat unhealthy things. They take meat, but vegetables remain. We should make our meat more expensive and our vegetables cheaper.

These strategies outlined above reflect the idea that unhealthy choices are the result of ignorance, lack of knowledge, cultural preferences or, at worst, bad will. These practices therefore focus on informing and (re)educating their users, thus translating the social problem of poverty into an educational problem. This ideology risks ignoring that some citizens have few available choices and resources and camouflages structural inequalities (Gray, 2013). Some volunteers – as reflected in the following quote - are well aware that the health discourse is at odds with the precarious (material) living conditions of welfare recipients:

We offer cans with ravioli. That's not healthy, but they can only heat something in the microwave. You can stress the importance of a healthy diet, but it depends on the living situation. Homeless people cannot even heat food. We may all come up with good examples, but if people don't have a gas stove , you reach nothing  with your healthy food.

This quote critiques the assumption that individuals can freely choose healthy options, while in fact, material conditions -  housing, access to kitchens, and income - fundamentally shape what is possible. As such, the volunteer challenges a moralizing or individualistic view of nutrition and underscores the need for systemic solutions (e.g. access to cooking facilities, affordable fresh food) rather than merely educational ones. 

New charity as a political actor: the canary that barks

While the new charity economy might merely be perceived as an affirmative practice of the status quo, pacifying the sharpest edges of poverty, some of the organizations undertake efforts in changing unjust policies and try to realize a social justice agenda (De Corte & Roose, 2020), as witnessed by a volunteer:

There is a protest function in what we do. It's about creating awareness about a fundamental problem. Giving food is supportive, but it’s not going to solve poverty. We want to use our network of volunteer services with and for people in poverty to put our finger on the wound and send a signal to the government.

The quote illustrates that the charity and civic organizations do not only focus on providing services to people and to guarantee individual access to social rights, but aim to participate in the public debate and feed the scope/content of (local) social policy (De Corte & Roose, 2020). For example, some services combine food aid with an association where individual as well as collective rights are critically politicized:

Our organization was founded 25 years ago as a charity organization, but was gradually reformed into a self-advocacy organization of people living in poverty. So we organize basic aid to respond to people's individual needs. But we also have thematic groups, where we are much more committed to policy work.

This illustrates that they aim to participate in the political process and to have a voice in social policies that affect the lives of people they represent. They do so by  formulating and defending policy demands that are informed by the day-to-day experiences of social actors who work with clients on an individual basis (De Corte & Roose, 2020):

Yearly, we hand over a signals bundle to the local policy actors, with signals that we pick up through working with people in poverty. 

The following excerpt illustrates how some practices drift away from the concept of basic material support in favor of a more structural perspective on poverty and anti-poverty policy making, questioning the complex triangular relationship between the individual, welfare provisions and the state in realizing human dignity for all citizens (Grymonprez et al., 2016): 

There is a need and we want to help to create space to answer that need, but we don't want to take over traditional food distribution. We also don't think it's the task of citizens. It is still the role of the government to organize that. But we do think that through this network we can collect stories and be a kind of barometer.

This show how  some charity economy initiatives engage to keep the structural causes of social problems in view to question them and change the situation in the direction of greater respect for human dignity (Gal & Weiss-Gal, 2015; Roose, 2017). However, also here their position is becoming diffuse through new hybrid constructions pleaded by the city of Ghent:  

We take a critical stance towards the trajectory of material support. The city perceives the material support provided by voluntary services as a supplement to social security. While these services want to be a critique of the failure of social security. But actually, by stepping into the trajectory, the services are silenced in voicing criticism about the failure of social security.

This illustrates how these critical (sometimes even political) practices might be silenced by incorporating them in the formal circuit where their function is merely palliative, glossing over the unjust and degrading social and political dynamics. 

Concluding reflections

Our research study reveals - similar to other research findings in Europe (Schoneville, 2018; Hermans et al., 2024) - how charity-based food and material support initiatives in Ghent have become increasingly institutionalized as complementary parts of the local welfare system. This seems to be at odds with the dream of the social welfare state “to actually guarantee basic social rights to all citizens and thereby make charity aid as redundant as possible" (Cantillon, 2020, p. 12). While these organizations fill the gaps left by public welfare, their growing integration risks shifting the focus from citizens’ rights to human flourishing toward mere survival through material aid (Hermans et al., 2024). 

Our findings unveil that the coordination efforts of the city, aimed at efficiency and equality, have introduced bureaucratic and territorial logics that can obscure the lived realities and preferences of welfare recipients. As organizational procedures and referral systems expand, they sometimes blur the responsiveness to individual needs. 

At the same time, many initiatives navigate a tension between challenging and reproducing the formal welfare logic. On the one hand they detect poverty situations and try provide accessible, lifeworld-oriented supportfor the most vulnerable citizens.  On the other hand, they also adopt activation-oriented and conditional practices. These conditions - such as behavioural expectations or health-based restrictions – risk to translate poverty into an individual moral or educational issue, masking deeper structural inequalities (Vandenbroeck et al., 2011). The emergence of ecological and sustainability rationales in new citizen-led projects further normalizes food aid, potentially depoliticizing poverty under the guise of innovation.

Nevertheless, several organizations consciously use their proximity to people living in poverty to advocate for structural change, collecting “signals” from daily practice to influence local social policy and  joining forces in networks to make the voices of people in poverty heard (Cantillon, 2020). They fuel the public and political debate about a more equal and just society. Thus, they prevent the slogan "emergency aid under protest" from becoming a hollow phrase, but they make it resonate loudly. They act as canaries in the coalmine that bark. From their proximity in the lives of people in poverty, they stress that the best guarantee to the right to sufficient, healthy and quality food is still a livable income, income security and an appropriate welfare system, not "left over food for left behind people" (the Guardian in Cantillon, 2020, p. 19).

Overall, the findings highlight a shifting welfare landscape in which charity practices oscillate between solidarity and control, empowerment and pacification, raising fundamental questions about the boundaries of social rights, dignity, and the state’s responsibility for poverty reduction (Lorenz, 2006, 2016). In that way, these charity practices force (local) governments to think about where to situate the focus of intervention. If (local) policy calibrates human rights on the principle of “sufficiency,” one tempers the ambition of realizing (material) equality and remedial practices are facilitated. When human rights are founded on the ideal of “equality,” it results in radical redistributive policies (Moyn, 2018). Access to a dignified existence requires policies that are committed to achieving a decent income, housing, education, health care, ...

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The revival of food support as an anti-poverty strategy: 

Hunger as the canary in the coalmine?

Caroline Vandekinderen, Didier Reynaert, Annick Verstraete, Griet Roets

Corresponding author: Caroline.vandekinderen@ugent.be

The European Journal of Social Work

Accepted 18 Jan 2026, Published online 09 Feb 2026

https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2026.2622495

Abstract

Poverty and social inequality is a central challenge to the social justice aspirations of diverse European societies and social work is historically strongly involved in this struggle against poverty and social inequality. However, actually social protection and social security rationales resulting from welfare state orientations, have increasingly receded into the background. This resonates in changing and hybrid relationships between formal and informal social work arrangements in the welfare landscape. The emergence of “neo-philantrophy” or “new charity economy” is part of this major re-establishment in the political struggle against poverty. In this contribution, we focus on the mushrooming number of initiatives of food support in Ghent, offered as forms of emergency relief for people living in poverty. Within these practices, we explore the central fields of tensions between private and public approaches in which charity- and rights-based orientations are at play.

Keywords: poverty, new charity economy, social rights
 

Introduction

The prevalence of poverty and social inequality continues to present a central challenge to the social justice aspirations of diverse European societies (Fritzell & Ritakallio, 2010). Social work – both as an academic discipline and practice-based profession in which formal as well as informal actors have a role – has a long involvement in this struggle (Villadsen, 2007; Lorenz, 2006, 2016). 

Social work is, however, involved in the changing historically complex relationship between the state, civil society, the market, and citizens, leading to welfare state transformations which result in changing and hybrid relationships between formal and informal social work arrangements in the welfare landscape (Dean, 2015). Critical scholars have argued that there is a complex reconfiguration of the institutional and normative framework of European welfare states, with reference to a potential erosion of “government commitments in securing the welfare rights of citizens” (Garrett, 2019, p. 190). Recent research shows that an increasing group of people with the formal status of citizen falls through the cracks of the professional and rights-oriented welfare system (Dwyer, 2019). They risk to end up at the bottom rung of the ladder of citizenship, as welfare state arrangements emphasize individual responsibilities and obligations rather than mutual solidarity and social justice (Turner, 2016; De Wanckel et al., 2021). Moreover, there is a growing group of people (e.g. through intra-European and global waves of migration) who do not reach the first rung of the ladder towards basic social rights, since national welfare states embody a territorial logic in which entitlements are based on national identities and “merits” (Turner, 2016). Informal actors operating in the shadow of the welfare state often respond to these emergent needs of people with limited rights to welfare (Schrooten et al., 2019).

In that vein, critical attention in social policy and social work scholarship has emerged on issues of “neo-philanthropy” (Villadsen, 2007), “new philanthropy” (Morvaridi, 2016), or “new charity economy” (Kessl et al., 2019; Roets et al., 2024). The “new charity economy” (Kessl, 2009) describes “a distribution system in the private sphere of European societies in which basic goods – often considered to be in surplus – are distributed for free or sold at discount prices to ‘the poor’ or ‘the needy’ through voluntary helpers” in food banks, soup kitchens, clothes shops and thrift stores (Kessl et al., 2019, p. 367). Charity support has never completely disappeared from the scene, but disappointing poverty trends and welfare state limitations and transformations have paved the way for  a normative shift from social protection and security towards non-rights based practices, such as food support (Hermans et al., 2024).. Kessl et al. 2019 (p.365) however categorize this support as “new” since it results from and expresses “the transformation of the welfare state, as the expansion of such distribution economy is part of a major re-establishment in the political battle against poverty”. 

In this contribution, we discuss the research findings of a qualitative study in Ghent, a city in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, in which we examined the mushrooming number of initiatives of food support offered as forms of emergency relief for people living in poverty. These social work practices involve a wide diversity of informal partners in the welfare landscape about whom relatively little knowledge has been acquired (Debruyne & Meeus, 2018). The aim of this study is therefore to identify and discuss the different logics underlying social work’s involvement in the provision of food support in relation to its social justice orientation. 

Methodology

Research context

Our study is implemented in the City of Ghent, which is the capital of the province of East-Flanders in Belgium. This case study has strategic importance for generating innovative knowledge (see Yin, 2014) in relation to food initiatives for people in poverty for several reasons. First, Ghent has historically a well elaborated network of KRAS (Kring Rond Armoede in de Stad – circle around poverty within the city) initiatives, nowadays consisting of 18 volunteer anti-poverty organizations, of which thirteen provide food support. Many of these initiatives exist for more than 30 years and have roots in catholic inspiration, as evidenced by the original meaning of the abbreviation KRAS, namely Kerk aan de Rand van de Stad - church on the edge of city. However, against the background of weakened public welfare services, only recently this long-term established actor collaborates much closer with the local government (as we will illustrate in the findings). Moreover, Ghent counts seven social restaurants which organize activation and employment trajectories for vulnerable citizens and offer meals at a diminished price for people in poverty. Furthermore, since March 2017, the Public Centre for Social Welfare (PCSW) and the City of Ghent have established a logistic platform to avoid food waste by collecting and redistributing food surpluses through a social employment project. This project aims to bring more healthy, fresh food to people living in poverty and to avoid heavy CO2 emissions. Finally Ghent counts 500 citizen initiatives. Among those citizen and neighborhood initiatives, there is recently a growing interest in and engagement towards the topic of food. There are diverse soup kitchens where volunteers use food surpluses to prepare meals that are offered for a free contribution. During the COVID pandemia,  Gent Samen Solidair (Ghent together in solidarity) was established as a network organization in which some of these citizen initiatives are represented. Until today, they share expertise and information when providing emergency aid.

Strategies of data-collection: qualitative semi-structured interviews with key figures

In order to gain insight into the everyday practices that unfolds in local contexts and concrete situations, we explored the perspectives of key figures in local (poverty) policy and representatives of the diverse food initiatives in social work. 

We performed 31 semi-structured interviews (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998) which were all audio-taped and fully transcribed, including six interviews with policy makers and 25 interviews with representatives of the diverse food initiatives. The food initiatives were partly selected through snowball-sampling, since we started with the practitioners from well-known initiatives, who referred us to other initiatives which we didn’t know beforehand. In total, three interviews took place with practitioners from social restaurants, thirteen with representatives from organizations resorting under KRAS, two interviews with key figures from religiously inspired initiatives, one interview with a practitioner from a social grocery, two interviews with people involved in a citizen’s initiative and four interviews with people engaged in initiatives which do not resort under one of the other categories. Participants were informed about the knowledge ambition of the research, the voluntary nature of participation and the anonymous character of the conversation. Our research was conducted conform the institutional requirements of the ethical committee of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Ghent University. 

Strategies of data-analysis: qualitative content analysis

The data were analyzed in an exploratory and interpretative manner based on a directed approach to qualitative content analysis (Wester, 1987), defined as “any qualitative data reduction and sense making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings” (Patton, 2002, p. 453). Our analysis was crucially informed by  a conceptual frame of reference that has been developed by Maeseele (2012) and further elaborated by Roets et al. (2024) which identifies private and public approaches as part of charity- and rights-based orientations within social policy and work practices that unfold within the context of current welfare arrangements addressing poverty. 

The data were analyzed by engaging in a directed approach (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) in order to provide thick and rich descriptions of the social realities created in and normative orientations adopted by particular social work practices on the continuum of charity – rights oriented approaches. 

Findings

The findings are presented according to five analytical nodes in which the central fields of tensions between private and public approaches as part of charity- and rights-based orientations are at play.

We discuss (1) the ongoing process of the institutionalization of emergency relief and additionally (2) how an organizational logic risks to blur the needs of service users; (3) the balancing act of organizations between challenging and becoming part of (the (logic of) the formal circuit; (4) how they sometimes create surplus conditions; and (5) the potentially political role of the new charity economy actors. 

An institutionalization of emergency relief

Classic welfare settlements of the post-Second World War period emphasize citizens’ status-based entitlements to at least a minimum level of publicly funded social security benefits and welfare services (Dwyer, 2019). In Belgium, the law on the PCSW of 1976 introduced the right to social services, implying that every citizen had the right to the necessary help and support to build an existence in human dignity (De Corte et. al. 2019). This entails the institutionalization of a public and democratic social work logic and the right to human flourishing. Although the welfare state continues to play a crucial role in the arrangements to redistribute social resources and power, our study reveals that a number of vulnerable citizens slip through the net of public arrangements while it are volunteer and charity organizations that intercept them. As such, food banks have become secondary extensions of weakened social safety nets (Riches, 2022), as outlined by one of the volunteers: 

Article 1 of the PCSW states that they are the safety net for people in poverty. Butwe helped people who couldn't go to the PCSW. That was contrary to their logic. However we continued to register  which people we supported, e.g. people who were suspended or had a wage garnishment, many people who did not receive benefits before the weekend when the PCSW was closed, or their file had to be presented at the PCSW council and go through a whole procedure. While we had no procedures.

This volunteer highlights that the PCSW is mandated to support individuals living in poverty; however, as a volunteer organization, they frequently engage with individuals who are unable to access such formal assistance. Although these volunteer food support initiatives coexist with institutional forms of assistance, a process of institutionalization is ongoing by which these initiatives are gradually being recognized as part of the local welfare state system to support people in poverty (De Smedt & Vranken, 2018). For example, KRAS evolved from independent bottom-up initiatives, tolerated by the PCSW with some degree of suspicion, to partners of public services receiving (minimal) financial support.

As Schonneville (2018) already observed, there are organizational links between the charity economy and central parts of the welfare state. This connection is reflected in the fact that social workers in (public) organizations refer their clients to local food banks and material support initiatives, not seldom in situations where they are confronted with their own bureaucratic boundaries, as explained by a volunteer:

When they [from the PCSW] are at their wit's end, they send them [people in need] to us. For example there was that woman whose husband had died, her child was  recognized, but she didn’t. They became homeless,had no food and drink. According to the regulations, the child could be taken into a refuge, but not the mother since she had no papers. The PCSW got stuck in that situation, and asked us: don't you know someone or do you have options?

This particular situation is indicative for a transformation in which the charity economy has become a functional part of the welfare arrangement. As such poverty reduction is concerned as a task for civil society based on donations and voluntary work (Kessl et al., 2019). In that vein, the city of Ghent initiated a trajectory on material support, aiming at a better coordination of the mushrooming initiatives in order to guaranteeing the access to material support for every citizen. However, this might entail the risk of eroding the subjective right to human flourishing and replacing it by a guaranteeing the access to necessary material support to survive. This shift of welfare rationales might involve highly problematic and arbitrary practices, as the following strategy unveils:

People who arrive draw a ticket, a number. When they are lucky, they are among the first. But when they are at the end, there is sometimes nothing left in the store. That's  a raffle but the most fair way to organize it.

One of the pioneers of the KRAS services fiercely articulated his concern about the danger of institutionalizing the right on food support instead of the right on human flourishing – including the right to a sufficient income. This reveals the possibly shifting interpretation of “material resources” from income, housing, and mobility resources towards food, clothes and small furniture. Although we see a revival of these remedial strategies there is a strong awareness amongst the volunteers that the support of food banks and similar organizations can only alleviate the reality of poverty, but is neither capable nor aimed to fight poverty, as expressed by one of the volunteers:

You're not going to fight poverty by feeding people. But if everyone has a nice structural dream, while people are dying of hunger, that's not a solution either.

Besides the more traditional charity initiatives who originated in the eighties, based on catholic inspiration, there is an expansion of citizen’s initiatives focusing on emergency relief and food (re-)distribution, based on different logics, as explained by a policy maker:

In the civic budgets, a lot of initiatives around food have been submitted, picking up that dynamic around reuse of surplus food and sustainability as a theme. 

The underlying rationales include dominantly ecological sustainability and the idea of recycling food surpluses, but also social cohesion and health.  One of the volunteers uttered her concerns about this evolution:

There are lots of new ecological initiatives taking action against waste. For example Foodsavers, which finally enables us to provide people with fruit and vegetables. In itself, that's a good thing. But it also makes me anxious. Fear about the way that it is getting institutionalized. (...) It should not be that we keep on producing, we have surpluses and we distribute that amongst people in poverty and that replaces wages and income.

This shows that although these initiatives hold the potential of criticizing dominant food (over)production strategies, they also entail the risk that under the innovative veil of ecological sustainability, food support initiatives for people in poverty are further institutionalized and even becoming normal. In some cases, however, they are open to all citizens and evolve towards universal services rather than selective ones. 

An organizational logic blurring the needs of service users

As argued above, the food initiatives in Ghent are increasingly part of the local welfare system in which a pluralization of actors are involved in the provision of social services and welfare resources. The range of actors includes a set of different formal and informal welfare providers who all appeal to certain but varying criteria and procedures, to organize the selective access to their service or to grant a reduced rate. These criteria or procedures range between territorial boundaries, referral by (public) professional social work services, age limits, a culture pass, etc.

However, the current Ghent poverty policy plan states that the aim is to optimize referral and cooperation between the PCSW and food initiatives and to streamline the selection criteria. As such, the PCSW  - as the local public actor – positioned itself in a directing role to tune the different actors in the territory (Andreotti et al., 2012), and developed a future model for material support. The central aim was to avoid a proliferation of social services within the food initiatives as a parallel circuit to the social service of the PCSW. The stated rationale was the need for a shared vision of networking and collaboration that is publicly transparent, with reference to challenges such as logistics (e.g. for the redistribution of leftover food), referrals between public and private social work actors, funding, and territorial accessibility of the supply in terms of seven zones or clusters in the city (e.g. to prevent the “shopping” behavior of people in need), quality control of service delivery, etc., as explained by a volunteer:

That zoning is there to make sure that people don't visit three or four services at once, but that they go to the service that is closest [to the place where they live]. That there are not four social services investing time into the same person or the same family.

This reasoning with regard to the zoning reveals that their social services still exist and that the installation of the territoriality principle proofs its utility in reducing the over-querying of these social services and the volunteers by the same clients. 

However, these logics underpinning the idea of territoriality – which implies that people have to rely on the ervice that is closest to their domicile -  deny the motives and preferences of welfare recipients to visit a certain service, as they experience big differences between the organizations, both in the support offered (ranging from food support to serving full meals, offering social services, organizing socio-cultural activities) as in the amount of goods, as witnessed by a volunteer:

You have KRAS services in richer areas with 1% poverty. Others are in neighborhoods with 80% poverty. They have to put barriers because the demand is so high. KRAS services look at the family income and the amount of money left after necessary bills are paid. That scale should be the same everywhere. But that’s not the case. One [service/zone] faces much more poverty than another.

The PCSW has developed a registration tool that should be used by the civil society initiatives for the sake of transparency. Howeverr, the strong effort of the city in streamlining the private initiatives of emergency relief in order to realize  equal access might blur the precarious position of vulnerable people with regard to the realization of their social rights by volunteers. One of the initiators of the KRAS services pronounced the ambiguous position of these private organizations with regard to the duty in guaranteeing the right to support, stressing their autonomous position in the social field:

We are not an extension of the PCSW. There is often a kind of confusion. We remain an autonomous volunteer initiative. So we are in no way obliged to adopt directives from the PCSW. We also make it clear to our clients: you don't come here because you are entitled to something, but you can come here because we think you deserve support based on your humanity. You don't come here to take up your rights.

This quote illustrates that the idea of maximizing equality by directing public resources towards the most disadvantaged through residual practices might be tricky from a human rights perspective.. 

Balancing between challenging and becoming part of (the logic of) the formal circuit

While downsizing the expectations of public services and welfare recipients concerning the enforceability of rights in food support initiatives, the interviews revealed how rights-oriented approaches gradually emerge in charity economy practices. Many of the food support initiatives mainly identify themselves as places for detecting vulnerable people living in the shadow of public welfare services and not taking up their social rights. As such, the provision of food and material goods is perceived as a stepping stone to detect other needs, as the following quote exemplifies:

We provide 'bed-bath-bread' and meanwhile we support people living in under-protection. We provide a housing-oriented approach linked to legal support, while we support people materially, for example by giving them food.

This shows how some of the organizations offer a broad range of services going beyond the traditional food support to improve the life situation of people on a variety of domains. They inscribe welfare recipients on the waiting list of social housing companies, they take care of school bills, take the lead to obtain scholarship, facilitate the contact between the school and parents, arrange holiday camps,, enable families to travel low budget, collaborate with doctors and dentists for screening, , organize leisure activities or language courses, translate official correspondence and guide people to official services, and so on.

To capture the everyday concerns of service users, some of the volunteers try to be present in the living environment of people: 

We go on a bread round once a week. On these home visits you can discuss all kinds of things with families, for example the papers and the bills..

This volunteer aims to connect  to specific aspects or glimpses of people’s lived experiences and concerns.  Some of the volunteers highlight the need to go beyond the observable functioning of people and to engage with social injustices in the life worlds (Grunwald & Thiersch, 2009), recognizing that a person’s needs and aspirations are shaped by interactions between individuals and their social and material environments and the available resources, as aptly illustrated in the following quote: 

We were invited to a school assembly. That family was living  in a squat and the school could  not reach the parents. During the meeting, the mom was scrutinized by three  people from school. But you don't get to know much when you put vulnerable people under fire. I started a dialogue with that girl. I asked her: ‘Where did you wake up this morning?’ A squat. 'Where did you sleep yesterday? Where are you going to sleep tomorrow?' Once at a sister's house, once there. 'How many people live in that squat?' 35 'How many people have to get up at 7 a.m. to get to school on time?' Just me. 'Who made your sandwiches?' There was no bread.

This volunteer discussed the resources and the conditions (housing, education, work, income) in which people are expected to lead a dignified existence (Roose & De Bie, 2003), supporting this young girl to navigate her everyday life, and mobilizing resources and support. At the same time, he challenged public services to broaden their perspective in supporting people to realize human dignity: 

Official ones are the counter clerks and they can do something for you from here to the edge of the table. But we're on the other side of the counter and we're always challenging that counter back to widen it a little bit.

As mentioned above, many of the KRAS organizations set up their own social service to map welfare recipients’ situation on several life domains and to connect their support to the needs. However, often, this is a subtle way to encourage people to undertake steps towards so-called “active citizenship”, as clarified by a volunteer:

We have quarterly contact with people, to take a look at the situation. For example, if people are on a living wage, to check if they have been to the work store. We ask them to bring proof.  In case of legal problems, we ask if they have consulted a service. Our social service also serves to check whether people take steps to change their situation. We ask foreigners to bring the registration proof for Dutch classes.

These practices depict that, while challenging some developments within professional social work, these food initiatives run the risk of becoming an integral and instrumental part of the activation paradigm. For example, certain organizations define a three-monthly visit at their social service as an entrance ticket for the food support, as clarified by a volunteer: 

People cannot come to food distribution without being registered by our social services department and showing up on the appointment. Afterwards, they get access to food support for three months, and get another appointment [with social services] three months later. We are strict about that. Recently, we refused two visitors because they didn't show up for their appointment and didn't call. They can't get a food package.

This shows how a possibly supportive practice rooted in a lifeworld approach is transformed into a controlling one, reflecting the idea of behaving in a responsible manner.

Creating surplus conditionality

In practice, numerous unwritten rules of conduct install a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving, putting pressure on the rights-oriented nature of practice. As illustrated above, some volunteers evaluate welfare recipients' willingness to behave in accordance with the ideal of the active and responsible citizen. The so-called “laziness” of specific clientele belonging to an ethnic minority group is alluded to in the following quote: 

Belgians who come here are really needy. But Slovak, they milk the system a bit. Those young women should get education. To do something. Not to remain dependent on food distribution all their life. I have proposed at the meeting to give courses to those Slovakian young women. They don't speak a word of Dutch. These girls are 24-25 years old, they have 6 or 7 children.. You have to give them a step to get into the job market through education because they really are very low-skilled.

The importance of education and employment is rightly emphasized by this volunteer as a structural component of a poverty reduction strategy. However, this actor gives the impression that she believes that welfare recipients are unwilling to act as active citizens. This bias is also reflected in the opening hours of most food relief initiatives that are not geared to working people (Cohen et al., 2017). The beginning of the quote also insinuates (a repeatedly mentioned) suspicion of fraud and attempts to extract unearned benefits from food aid. The same logic is at work in the following quote: 

The PCSW referred a client to us, but we made a comment about that, because they were here with a BMW SUV. You know what such a car costs. So I called that assistant from the PCSW. She responded, 'I'm a sworn official and if I say they should get food, they should.' Excuse me, as a service we take care of our own food, so we can decide ourselves.

This volunteer  portrays the PCSW as an arena of deception (Cohen et al., 2017), questioning the judgment of public services and emphasizing the autonomy of one's own organization to settle discussions around the right to receive support.

Welfare recipients who express their gratitude and respect significantly increase their chances of receiving a bonus. An additional effort is also made for those in "high need”, although an exact definition remains guesswork. In any case, prioritizing needs points to a discordant dynamic. Volunteers argue that they know their clients and rely on their judgment, which requires far-reaching exposure of the private sphere. 

Moreover, the expectation of reporting an excessive emergency to volunteers may clash with the self-esteem and pride of welfare recipients, who may develop survival strategies in line with their aspirations and dignity, such as reselling second-hand clothing, a practice to which a volunteer refers: 

We used to have a book to keep track of what people took. We stopped doing that, but we still check what they take home. They may come back every three weeks, but if you take a jacket today, you cannot have a jacket next time. It are always the quick ones who take another jacket, but if they don't have it anymore, it's because they're selling it to have money.

These strategies of resale are labeled by volunteers as improper use of material resources, even when they create additional opportunities (e.g., additional financial resources) against the fragile material horizon of daily life. Moreover, whereas sustainability and health logics gain ground within the food relief field, volunteers are deploying various strategies to encourage individuals to make healthy and ecological choices. These interventions are balancing in the field of tension between care and control. Some of the volunteers provide welfare recipients with requested advice, as explained below:

A volunteer walks with them through the store and says: 'You don't forget to take fresh things?,' or 'Don’t you need milk?,' or 'I'd take less cookies’. Everyone is directed a bit, but overall they have the choice of what they want.

Other initiatives adjust their assortment in the name of health: sugar is banned and oil limited. These disciplinary practices sometimes impede equal access to certain goods, since the required financial contribution for certain products is artificially increased to discourage unhealthy choices, as argued:

We do that deliberately, asking more expensive prices for products like cake. Because otherwise they would only eat unhealthy things. They take meat, but vegetables remain. We should make our meat more expensive and our vegetables cheaper.

These strategies outlined above reflect the idea that unhealthy choices are the result of ignorance, lack of knowledge, cultural preferences or, at worst, bad will. These practices therefore focus on informing and (re)educating their users, thus translating the social problem of poverty into an educational problem. This ideology risks ignoring that some citizens have few available choices and resources and camouflages structural inequalities (Gray, 2013). Some volunteers – as reflected in the following quote - are well aware that the health discourse is at odds with the precarious (material) living conditions of welfare recipients:

We offer cans with ravioli. That's not healthy, but they can only heat something in the microwave. You can stress the importance of a healthy diet, but it depends on the living situation. Homeless people cannot even heat food. We may all come up with good examples, but if people don't have a gas stove , you reach nothing  with your healthy food.

This quote critiques the assumption that individuals can freely choose healthy options, while in fact, material conditions -  housing, access to kitchens, and income - fundamentally shape what is possible. As such, the volunteer challenges a moralizing or individualistic view of nutrition and underscores the need for systemic solutions (e.g. access to cooking facilities, affordable fresh food) rather than merely educational ones. 

New charity as a political actor: the canary that barks

While the new charity economy might merely be perceived as an affirmative practice of the status quo, pacifying the sharpest edges of poverty, some of the organizations undertake efforts in changing unjust policies and try to realize a social justice agenda (De Corte & Roose, 2020), as witnessed by a volunteer:

There is a protest function in what we do. It's about creating awareness about a fundamental problem. Giving food is supportive, but it’s not going to solve poverty. We want to use our network of volunteer services with and for people in poverty to put our finger on the wound and send a signal to the government.

The quote illustrates that the charity and civic organizations do not only focus on providing services to people and to guarantee individual access to social rights, but aim to participate in the public debate and feed the scope/content of (local) social policy (De Corte & Roose, 2020). For example, some services combine food aid with an association where individual as well as collective rights are critically politicized:

Our organization was founded 25 years ago as a charity organization, but was gradually reformed into a self-advocacy organization of people living in poverty. So we organize basic aid to respond to people's individual needs. But we also have thematic groups, where we are much more committed to policy work.

This illustrates that they aim to participate in the political process and to have a voice in social policies that affect the lives of people they represent. They do so by  formulating and defending policy demands that are informed by the day-to-day experiences of social actors who work with clients on an individual basis (De Corte & Roose, 2020):

Yearly, we hand over a signals bundle to the local policy actors, with signals that we pick up through working with people in poverty. 

The following excerpt illustrates how some practices drift away from the concept of basic material support in favor of a more structural perspective on poverty and anti-poverty policy making, questioning the complex triangular relationship between the individual, welfare provisions and the state in realizing human dignity for all citizens (Grymonprez et al., 2016): 

There is a need and we want to help to create space to answer that need, but we don't want to take over traditional food distribution. We also don't think it's the task of citizens. It is still the role of the government to organize that. But we do think that through this network we can collect stories and be a kind of barometer.

This show how  some charity economy initiatives engage to keep the structural causes of social problems in view to question them and change the situation in the direction of greater respect for human dignity (Gal & Weiss-Gal, 2015; Roose, 2017). However, also here their position is becoming diffuse through new hybrid constructions pleaded by the city of Ghent:  

We take a critical stance towards the trajectory of material support. The city perceives the material support provided by voluntary services as a supplement to social security. While these services want to be a critique of the failure of social security. But actually, by stepping into the trajectory, the services are silenced in voicing criticism about the failure of social security.

This illustrates how these critical (sometimes even political) practices might be silenced by incorporating them in the formal circuit where their function is merely palliative, glossing over the unjust and degrading social and political dynamics. 

Concluding reflections

Our research study reveals - similar to other research findings in Europe (Schoneville, 2018; Hermans et al., 2024) - how charity-based food and material support initiatives in Ghent have become increasingly institutionalized as complementary parts of the local welfare system. This seems to be at odds with the dream of the social welfare state “to actually guarantee basic social rights to all citizens and thereby make charity aid as redundant as possible" (Cantillon, 2020, p. 12). While these organizations fill the gaps left by public welfare, their growing integration risks shifting the focus from citizens’ rights to human flourishing toward mere survival through material aid (Hermans et al., 2024). 

Our findings unveil that the coordination efforts of the city, aimed at efficiency and equality, have introduced bureaucratic and territorial logics that can obscure the lived realities and preferences of welfare recipients. As organizational procedures and referral systems expand, they sometimes blur the responsiveness to individual needs. 

At the same time, many initiatives navigate a tension between challenging and reproducing the formal welfare logic. On the one hand they detect poverty situations and try provide accessible, lifeworld-oriented supportfor the most vulnerable citizens.  On the other hand, they also adopt activation-oriented and conditional practices. These conditions - such as behavioural expectations or health-based restrictions – risk to translate poverty into an individual moral or educational issue, masking deeper structural inequalities (Vandenbroeck et al., 2011). The emergence of ecological and sustainability rationales in new citizen-led projects further normalizes food aid, potentially depoliticizing poverty under the guise of innovation.

Nevertheless, several organizations consciously use their proximity to people living in poverty to advocate for structural change, collecting “signals” from daily practice to influence local social policy and  joining forces in networks to make the voices of people in poverty heard (Cantillon, 2020). They fuel the public and political debate about a more equal and just society. Thus, they prevent the slogan "emergency aid under protest" from becoming a hollow phrase, but they make it resonate loudly. They act as canaries in the coalmine that bark. From their proximity in the lives of people in poverty, they stress that the best guarantee to the right to sufficient, healthy and quality food is still a livable income, income security and an appropriate welfare system, not "left over food for left behind people" (the Guardian in Cantillon, 2020, p. 19).

Overall, the findings highlight a shifting welfare landscape in which charity practices oscillate between solidarity and control, empowerment and pacification, raising fundamental questions about the boundaries of social rights, dignity, and the state’s responsibility for poverty reduction (Lorenz, 2006, 2016). In that way, these charity practices force (local) governments to think about where to situate the focus of intervention. If (local) policy calibrates human rights on the principle of “sufficiency,” one tempers the ambition of realizing (material) equality and remedial practices are facilitated. When human rights are founded on the ideal of “equality,” it results in radical redistributive policies (Moyn, 2018). Access to a dignified existence requires policies that are committed to achieving a decent income, housing, education, health care, ...

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Promotoren: prof. dr. Griet Roets, dr. Caroline Vandekinderen

Promotor(en): Prof. dr. Griet Roets, Dr. Caroline Vandekinderen

Children & Society, 2025

Promotoren: prof. dr. Griet Roets en dr. Caroline Vandekinderen

In K. Mattheeuws & J. Haeck (Eds.), Kansarm in de klas, kantelfiguren voor de klas: Leesbundel 7de onderwijscongres Brugge (pp. 64-68). Brugge: Stadsdrukkerij.