Workshop: Food and Migration

Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies, SOAS, University of London;
Food Studies Centre, SOAS, University of London;
Sussex Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex.

Convenors
Monica Janowski (Sussex) & Parvathi Raman (SOAS)

Registration:
£20 per guest
£15 concessions (for non SOAS students & retired)
£5 for SOAS students

Payment may be made by cash and/or cheque

Registration and Payment Form
For more information and to book a place, please contact
Rahima Begum, Centres and Programmes Office
Email: rb41@soas.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7898 4893 / 2

Food and Migration
Migration and food are two areas of study which are commanding increasing interest and analysis in contemporary society. Ongoing public and academic debate about the causes and consequences of migration is matched by growing speculation into food related practices and their social, economic and cultural outcomes. Yet the complex, and multidimensional, relationship between food and migration remains both under researched and under theorised.

For migrants, food and drink have a key role in maintaining kin, social and cultural ties brought from other places; in building new groups conceived of as based on cultural or social identity brought from elsewhere or based on new ties forged in one’s new home; and in creating divisions, both among immigrants themselves and between migrants and ‘host’ groups.

Over time, migrant foodways are altered through contact with those of other migrants and of groups already living in a place, as well as in the context of the availability of different foodstuffs. New, syncretic foodways are constructed which reflect new social, economic and cultural configurations. The response of natives and other migrants to incoming foodways plays a part in this process and relates to processes of identity construction among these groups as well as within an immigrant group.

As these processes play themselves out, they create the potential for deliberate statements, through foodways, of continuity or change. Individuals or groups may draw on new notions about appropriate feeding, offering and sharing relationships involving food and drink, and about the appropriate elements and structure of eating and drinking events, to alter relationships within the migrant group as well as to generate new relations outside the group. They may also cling to existing foodways and the relationships which go with them to resist change. These complex processes are likely to lead to tensions within a migrant group, particularly between generations.

Foodways are not normally static. However, with migration, foodways have a tendency to become ‘fossilized’ and to become ‘identity markers’. They take on a symbolic role – not only for migrants but also, to some extent, for host groups and members of other migrant groups. For an immigrant group, this may lead to the consumption of ritual meals representing cultural, religious or group identity on certain occasions. For host groups and other migrants, too, these ‘marker’ foods may, in their consumption at home or elsewhere, play a role in the construction of their own syncretic identity.

Our understanding of the process of migration, of identity construction, and of the relations between different groups, both migrant and host groups, can benefit greatly by peering through the lens of food and drink. However, there has not as yet been any systematic attempt to compare and contrast the ways in which food is playing a role in the process of migration among different migrant groups, and in relations between groups. The role of migrant foods in the construction of identity among natives and other migrant groups is also an area of research which has received little attention.

We hope that this workshop will both provide a context for sharing existing knowledge about migrant foodways and also an opportunity to discuss the possibility of future transdisciplinary research carried out on a collaborative basis.

Programme - Food & Migration - 2 & 3 February 2009 ~ Discussants to be announced