Politicizing hospitality: The emergency food assistance landscape in Thessaloniki

The ethnographic focus of this article is on municipal strategies for the ‘immediate management of poverty’ (gia tin amesi antimetopisi tis ftohias) in the city of Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. These involve several food assistance practices: two daily soup kitchens, two social markets and a food bank. Diefthinsi Koinonikis Politikis/The Department of Social Policy also called Pronoia/Welfare sustains a dormitory for homeless people, clothing banks and provides health services to poor, unemployed people, who have no health insurance (aporoi, anergoi, anasfalistoi). Although municipal policies aim to comfort poverty, hunger and deprivation, it is argued that there is a failure in meeting the basic prerequisites of hospitality and fair treatment as claimed. The landscape of food assistance in the city is characterized by tensions and contradictions: internal divisions, antagonistic discourses and power relations seem to be present at all stages. All of the above create a complicated picture of food assistantship and provision, and it remains questionable whether the Municipality’s initiatives provide long-term solutions to the growing problems of poverty and hunger. The main argument supported is the overall disempowerment of food assistance experience, which inevitably leads to an inability to provide comfort and to ‘host’ as initially aimed. The ethnographic case presented becomes the starting point for the analysis of the ethics of food production and consumption and the right to food, a deeply politicized issue and a basic human right, according to international conventions. Consequently, issues of power, exclusion and inequality are posed and problematized. Overall, the article adds to the documentation and the discussion of emergency food assistance in Greece.