Download full text
(170.5Kb)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-46888-1
Exports for your reference manager
Migration, nostalgia and the building of a food imaginary: Mexican migrants at "La Pulga" market in San Joaquin Valley, California
Migration, nostalgie et construction d'un imaginaire alimentaire: les migrants mexicains au marché "La Pulga", Vallée de San Joaquin, Californie
[journal article]
Abstract In the context of transnational migration, ethnic markets function as segmented spaces where migrants as a group may be observed on many levels. Provisioning in the market (as much by immigrants as by natives or long-term residents) as well as the consumption of prepared food in situ compel a multip... view more
In the context of transnational migration, ethnic markets function as segmented spaces where migrants as a group may be observed on many levels. Provisioning in the market (as much by immigrants as by natives or long-term residents) as well as the consumption of prepared food in situ compel a multiplicity of social interactions that facilitate knowledge and social relations, including recipes, memories, nostalgia, circulation of products and culinary techniques. In addition, a market can acquire a role as a meaningful transnational space of confluence for a system of relations and representations that help to decipher the complex social reality of subjects involved in a transnational migration phenomenon. With this paper we aim to highlight how a migratory context as well as the collectivization of a sensory experience as seen in an itinerant Mexican food market in California lead to the construction of a food imaginary related to Mexican food when it is disassociated from the original context in which it is produced. Thus, by means of an ethnographic approach, this paper aims to demonstrate how the collectivization of a sensory experience, framed under culinary nostalgia and triggered by the performativity and reflexivity of the subjects that take part in market activity, enables the construction of a food imaginary for the Mexican migrants that are regular clients of an itinerant market in California. (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
food; ethnicity; nostalgia; consumption; social relations; cultural identity; migration; collective consciousness; tradition; Mexico; United States of America
Classification
Migration, Sociology of Migration
Cultural Sociology, Sociology of Art, Sociology of Literature
Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology, Ethnosociology
Document language
English
Publication Year
2015
Page/Pages
p. 133-146
Journal
ESSACHESS - Journal for Communication Studies, 8 (2015) 2
Issue topic
The alimentary and gustative imaginary
ISSN
1775-352X
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed