ABSTRACT
This chapter unpacks classed assumptions about unemployed people and food, ultimately showcasing how social class privilege and marginalization organize communication about food (in)security through forms of governance. It does so through a comparative analysis of two unemployment organizations. In one nonprofit serving impoverished job seekers, the organization enacts poverty governance leading to substandard and unjust food provision. In another, social class privilege governs job seekers’ relationships with food. Yet the organization enacts forms of privilege governance, revealing assumptions that middle-income job seekers are food secure and financially stable, punishing them financially when they do not perform privileged social class identities despite their unemployment.
