Home food making, belonging, and identity negotiation in Belgian Taiwanese immigrant women\u2019s everyday food practices

Hsien-Ming Lin,Ching Lin Pang,Da-Chi Liao

doi:10.1186/s42779-020-00061-5

Hsien-Ming Lin, Ching Lin Pang + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s42779-020-00061-5

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Abstract

This article examines the experiences of (re)producing home food in the daily life and food practices of Belgian Taiwanese immigrant women. The research is based on ethnography—both online and offline—and qualitative semi-structured interviews with seventeen Taiwanese immigrant women/housewives in Belgium. Participants’ food practices involve buying, growing, making, and sharing food. Buying Taiwanese food ingredients presents a genuine challenge, as Chinese and Asian supermarkets in Belgium do not carry all Taiwanese food items. Consequently, many Taiwanese immigrant women and housewives in this study share similar experiences of growing specific foods in their home garden; moreover, by doing so, they also transform their gardens in their private homes into transnational social spaces, and thereby connect their previous lived experiences and homeland memories with their present living circumstances. Moreover, Taiwanese immigrant women like to prepare and cook food with their husband and children while imparting Taiwanese food and cultural values through personal stories. Furthermore, by organizing and regularly participating in activities involving sharing and eating food with other Taiwanese immigrant women, these food-sharing events and behaviors also become an important social networking strategy that allows them to make, expand, and cultivate friendships; in addition, food sharing activities also assist the participants to construct a collective social identity of being immigrant mothers/housewives in a foreign land. However, what is meant by “Taiwanese” food varies substantially between participants, as do the associated emotional and ethnic meanings. Several things were stated to account for the taste of Taiwanese food, such as using certain condiments or the Ta Tung rice cooker. Equally diverse is the personal attachment of ethnonational identity toward the notion of home food, as discussions of childhood memories, ethnonational identity negotiation, and cultural markers are accompanied by critical reflection on the social constructed nature of home/ethnic foods in the migration contexts.

Highlights

In this study, the authors take Taiwanese immigrant women in Belgium as the research subject, examining their daily food practices and experiences of making home/ethnic foods while living in a foreign land
Compared with people who live in their home country, immigrants may face far more challenges and difficulties when making their home/ethnic foods in their migrant life, since it is often difficult to find all of the food ingredients they need in the host society [1]
The study finds that four food practice behaviors are frequently conducted by those immigrant women—buying, growing, eating, and sharing home foods

Summary

Introduction

The authors take Taiwanese immigrant women in Belgium as the research subject, examining their daily food practices and experiences of making home/ethnic foods while living in a foreign land. The process does involve a series of negotiation and communication procedures between/among family members; as Bove et al already pointed out, Asian immigrant women take on the majority of domestic and family food arrangement work in the migration context, as well as in mixed-culture families, meaning that immigrant women may experience more pressures than their western spouses (in most cases, western men) regarding this issues [3] This is the reason why D’Sylva and Beagan indicated that daily food arrangements and the negotiation of different tastes in intercultural spousal relations could be regarded as the reflection of immigrant women’s position and its power hierarchy within the family. These authors noted that immigrant women’s family and power position could be demonstrated through the consequences of whether their family members accept the foods cooked by their immigrant family members, especially when these foods are prepared and presented on the family’s dining table [4]

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