Social security for food as an alternative structural response to food aid: How democratic governance contributes to the development of beneficiaries’ capabilities.

Food insecurity persists in high-income countries such as France and Belgium despite their well-developed welfare systems. Existing solutions are dominated by charity-based systems and surplus redistribution models that rely on unstable food streams, decrease nutritional quality, reinforce stigma, restrict culturally appropriated choices, and offer limited agency to people experiencing food insecurity. As a result, these systems frequently fail to address the multidimensional nature of food insecurity. Drawing from the Capabilities Approach, this paper examines the Social Security for Food (Securité Sociale de l’Alimentation, hereafter: SSA) as an emerging alternative that frames food as a social right, positioning it as an additional pillar of social security. The SSA is both a theoretical concept elaborated by French researchers, including D. Paturel in 2018, and a social movement (Collective for SSA) advocating for the extension of social security to food in France and Belgium. The collective includes a network of local implementations. These local experiments are structured around a democratic assembly, which establishes a system of financial contribution, a specific budget for sustainable food for the beneficiaries, and a network of retail points accredited to purchase sustainable food. Using the capabilities approach and the concept of food democracy, we analyse how SSA models can enhance the beneficiaries’ real freedoms to access and choose culturally appropriated, high-quality food, and to shape their food environments. The democratic dimension of SSA is a deliberate effort to create food democracy, understood as the right to food and participation in decision-making about food environments. Together, these frameworks position SSA as a democratic and political innovation, proposing a multi-dimensional response to food insecurity. Empirically, we investigate two local initiatives: the pioneering experiment in Montpellier, France, and the emerging project in Liège, Belgium. While Montpellier, through the Common Fund for Food, provides evidence of the first operational implementation of the SSA, Liège, as a developing case, shows how the model is translated into a different sociopolitical context, and how a democratic citizen assembly initiates such a project. The methodology combines participant observation and interviews with project coordinators and beneficiaries to analyse the intended functions of SSA and the lived experience of participants. The analysis focuses on the following questions: (1) To what extent does SSA expand food-related capabilities? And (2) How does SSA operationalise food democracy to develop beneficiaries’ capabilities? Preliminary findings suggest that SSA has the potential to overcome structural limitations of existing food-aid systems through democratic governance that builds capabilities for the beneficiaries. The democratic aspect of the experiments, through socially mixed local assemblies, supports the development of both food-related and socio-political capabilities. While academic literature on SSA experiments is starting to emerge in France, no publication in English deals with these processes. By mobilising food democracy as a leverage for the capabilities approach, this paper contributes theoretically by understanding how democratic involvement builds capabilities, and empirically by shedding light on innovative processes tackling multiple dimensions of food insecurity with universal social and democratic rights.