Food Entrepreneurship Among Immigrant Nigerians in Durban, KwaZulu Natal

Abstract

Anthropologists recognize that food eaten not only sustains the body but also affects and is affected by the social, economic, and political world in which it is selected, prepared, and consumed ( Appadurai, 1981 ; Bourdieu, 1984 ; Van der Veen, 2003 ). The consumption of food, in particular, is integral to the creation and negotiation of social identities and relationships, particularly within the context of migration and diaspora. This article is based on a study of 8 Nigerian immigrant entrepreneurs in the informal and small enterprise economy in the city of Durban in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. The ethnographic study uses narratives around the business of food (cooking, selling, and catering) as a lens through which it attempts to understand the perceptions, activities, experiences, and challenges immigrant entrepreneurs’ face in adapting and integrating into South African society. Part of the adjustment that immigrants’ encounter includes adopting new ingredients and cuisines into their diet because familiar or traditional foodstuffs from the homeland are not available in the new context. It is within this scarcity of accessing Nigerian food that the women in the sample have found a niche in which to survive and empower themselves in Durban. By relating their experiences of cooking, selling, and distributing traditional Nigerian food and groceries, the embodied experience of immigrant entrepreneurial activity is explored. The small sample consists mainly of female Nigerian immigrants and a few male immigrants who hail from different regional, educational, and migration backgrounds. The article contextualizes the food entrepreneurs within the larger context of a tense local climate of xenophobia which has impacted immigrant business trade and the growing negative sentiment that immigrants from countries to the north of South African borders are usurping South Africans’ job opportunities. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, the voices of the participants are foregrounded to provide some insight into the foodways and food enterprises of a group of Nigerian immigrants living in Durban.