Beyond Economic Barriers: Conceptualizing Food Insecurity among Resettled Refugees Living in the United States

Abstract

The US Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) is the most common survey tool to measure food security status at the national level. No previous studies have sought to establish its content validity for measuring food security among resettled refugees living in the US. This paper explores this dimension of the HFSSM through a qualitative grounded study of food management experiences among resettled refugees in Vermont. Analysis of the data revealed that non-financial barriers restricted participants’ food security, especially for recent arrivals. These findings present potential problems of content validity for HFSSM questions, and reveal the importance of considering food security through financial and non-financial domains.