Intersectionality and adolescent dietary behavior in Flanders: An analysis of the interaction between family affluence, gender, and migration background

Abstract

The Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study is a WHO cross-national research project that aims to increase understanding of adolescents’ well-being, health behaviors, and social contexts. The data used in this thesis has been collected by the Flemish division of the HBSC study, during the 2017/18 HBSC study survey round. A number of recent studies have discovered dietary inequalities among adolescents according to socioeconomic position (SEP), gender, and immigration status. Intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how multiple social identities such as race, gender, immigration history, and SEP intersect at the micro-level of individual experience to reflect interlocking systems of privilege and oppression at the macro social-structural level. The objective of this Master’s thesis was to apply an intersectional framework to the analysis of data from the 2017/18 HBSC study in order to investigate the relationship between consumption of vegetables, fruit, sweets, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) and the interplay between family affluence, gender, and migration background in Flemish adolescents.