Food resignification practices among refugees at the margins of Rome

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of our article is to explore the meaning of food for refugees and volunteers settled in emergency contexts in the city of Rome. We will look at ways in which refugees rephrase their experience with food in its symbolic dimensions expressed in norms, classifications, tastes while living in a context of accidental communities and uncertainty. In this study, we will rely on the observation of food practices of refugees and on the collection of narratives – also through the technique of photo elicitation – of privileged witnesses in urban encampments. Referring to seminal works on the cultural symbolic aspect of food (Mintz 1996; Montanari 2006; Rocillo-Aquino et al. 2021) and to ways of food preparation and consumption in unfamiliar cultural settings , our study will contribute to a better understanding of food systems in the dynamic milieu of forced migration, especially referring to emergency settings and other crisis situations (like the pandemic period). Ethnographic data lead us to consider the following questions: which features characterize food in such contexts of uncertainty? Which practices connected to food are performed and what do the narratives of refugees and volunteers tell us about the sense of food experienced? In brief, how is food re-signified in these emergency contexts?