Food Banks as Ambivalent Infrastructures: Care, Deservingness, and Governance in Milan and Manchester

Food banks have become central infrastructures of contemporary food systems, reflecting rising food insecurity and the restructuring of welfare provision. No longer confined to emergency relief, they operate as enduring arrangements through which access to food is organised and governed. This article offers a comparative ethnographic analysis of food banks in Milan (Italy) and Manchester (UK), examining how urban food governance is enacted through everyday practices of redistribution and moral judgement. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in community-based food aid initiatives, we argue that food banks function as ambivalent infrastructures of care, where support and control are co-constituted. In Milan, food sharing is embedded within a “caring economy” grounded in circularity and collective responsibility, yet constrained by neoliberal logics. For Manchester, food banks often regulate access through narratives of scarcity and gratitude, while also enabling forms of resistance and mutual support. Across both contexts, care emerges not as an alternative to governance, but as one of its primary modalities. The article contributes to urban food governance debates by: identifying food aid infrastructures as key arenas of post-2030 transformation; foregrounding the temporal politics of food insecurity; showing how food banks both challenge and reproduce social hierarchies; and centring care as a core mechanism of governance.