Ninth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

For various reasons, a sizeable number from Northeast India migrate to the metros in search of employment, education, settlement, and hence become migrants. Through this migration, they often abandon familiar settings and face complications in maintaining their culinary habits and culture. “Home is where your food is.” Many people associate the foods from their culture with warm, good feelings and memories. Food thus becomes particularly important for the northeast migrants living in the metros as food is usually the last cultural artefact that people shed and is a quotidian affair, evoking memories, and longing for home. The research looks into the process of migrant place-making and cultural exchange through the developing culture of northeast ethnic food in Delhi. It studies the intersection of food, community, nostalgia and cultural relations through this developing ethnic northeast foodscape in the urban village of Humayunpur, Delhi. It shows how the process of place-making through food adopted by northeast migrants is a strategic response to the alienation and indifference experienced by them as intra-national migrants, helping them formulate their identities, sustain their communities, provide comfort and a sense of security, and facilitate social relations and engagement with the receiving society on their terms. It shows how northeast migrants reflexively use food as a tool to negate, negotiate, navigate, and symbolically assert their identity as a collective far from home, highlighting how politics of identification, differentiation and incorporation function in the city through this foodscape.