Food dividends of migration: agents of cross-borderness and cultural continuity

• Main Author: Алиса Валерьевна Толстокорова
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Limited Liability Company Scientific Industrial Enterprise “Genesis. Frontier. Science” 2018-05-01
• Series: Журнал Фронтирных Исследований
• Subjects: Ukrainian labor migrants, food capital, food dividends of migration, agents of cross-borderness
• Online Access: https://jfs.today/index.php/jfs/article/view/31

The paper looks at the issue of food in connection with migration, taking Ukraine as the case in point. In so doing, it places emphasis on the role that food plays in the construction of migrants’ cultural experiences both as a tool of adjustment to a foreign milieu abroad, that is as an agent of cross-borderness, and as a means that enables the maintenance of cultural continuity with the homeland. To address food and migration nexus and to interpret food experiences of Ukrainian labor migrants the Bourdieu’s concept of non-monetary capitals is employed to set out food capital as the one in its own right. In the context of migration, food capital is conceived as resultant from the exchange of “cultural capitals” between migrants and locals, which endows food dividends of migration, culinary and gastronomic dividends among them, the latter being regarded as a ramification of social dividends of migration.