Cluster 3- Case Study: Food Security and Belonging

This case study focuses on the link between economic, environmental and social conditions of migration by looking at how food access and supply (food insecurity), humanitarian food assistance, and what we call “food practices of belonging” drive migration, enhance post-migration integration and affect human well-being. Accordingly, this Cluster has the following objectives:

1. Study the key social contexts that create and exacerbate food insecurity to determine root political, economic and environmental causes of insecurity;

2. Research the implementation and policy context of humanitarian food programs for displaced people before and after migration;

3. Examine how vulnerable individuals are involved in food production and preparation before and after migration;

4. Analyze post-migration food sovereignty and migrant food-based strategies for creating belonging in host societies.

5. Characterize the resistance and creative adaptation strategies of different kinds by individual migrants and/or organized migrants and their diversified groups of belonging.

The cluster uses anthropological, psychological and sociological methods and collaborates with CSOs to zoom-in on three dimensions of the food-migration nexus in the cases of migrants 1) from the Middle East in Turkey, Iraq, Austria and Sweden; 2) internal migrants in Argentina; 3) Venezuelan, Haitian and Cuban migrants in Brazil (Rio/Amazon and São Paulo); and 4) Dominican, Venezuelan, and Cuban migrants in Uruguay. All the country cases will seek to reach diverse groups, according to gender, race, LGTBQ+ and other categories.

Tasks

1. Framework Paper. Write a framework paper delineating the main conceptualizations of “Food Sovereignty and Belonging” to be used in the case study.

2.Fieldwork. The three dimensions to be explored are:

2.1. Food access and supply (food insecurity and sovereignty): Through 15 life story interviews with migrants, we explore the role of food insecurity in prompting migration. We will also examine their level of knowledge of government economic and environmental policies affecting food supply. We will foreground the experience of vulnerable social groups by considering how some places have a long history of being exposed to natural or human-made Global Changes and how this leads to culturally and historically specific coping mechanisms.

2.2 Humanitarian food assistance: Using a series of 3 focus groups, we will analyze migrant perceptions of food in reception conditions, cultural norms impacting food aid, and government and (I)NGO food aid and charitable giving during the integration phase after migration.

2.3. Food practices of belonging: Using participant observation and 5 kino-eye (online digital diaries), this sub-project examines how migrants negotiate their place in their new societies via cooking and food exchanges. We will ask participants to show us how they picture their belonging and as a way of giving participants a voice in the research process.

3. Database. Create a database of coded material for use in Cluster 5.

4. Report and Article Writing. In a thematic report, all country cases will be analyzed and integrated. In addition, an article will be written.

Leading

Susan Beth Rottmann

Assistant professor, Özyegin University
susan.rottmann@ozyegin.edu.tr

Expertise in Anthropology, migration, transnationalism, gender, ethnicity, film, human rights, religion and politics