This research finds that urban food policies in the Global North do not meaningfully consider immigrants and their experience of food. It argues many urban food policies promote dominant and nationalist understandings of healthy and sustainable food without recognising immigrants’ food-related knowledge and skills.
Abstract
Multicultural cities in the Global North are rapidly developing and releasing urban food policies that outline municipal visions of sustainable food systems. In turn, these policies shape conceptions of food citizenship in the city. While these policies largely absorb activities previously associated with “alternative” food systems, little is known about how they respond to critical food and race scholars who have noted that these food practices and spaces have historically marginalized immigrants.
A critical discourse analysis of 22 urban food policies from Global North cities reveals that most policies do not meaningfully consider immigrant foodscapes, foodways, and food-related labour. Many promote hegemonic and/or ethno-nationalistic understandings of “healthy” and “sustainable” food without recognizing immigrants’ food-related knowledge and skills. Policies largely fail to connect the topic of immigrant labour with goals like shortening supply chains, subject immigrant neighbourhoods to stigmatizing health discourses, and lack acknowledgement of the barriers immigrants may face to participating in sustainable food systems.
Relatedly, policy discourses articulate forms of food citizenship that emphasize individual obligations over rights related to food. This jeopardizes the potential for immigrants to be seen as belonging to dominant political urban food communities and benefitting from the symbolic and material rewards associated with them.
Reference
Bonnevera, I. “New food cultures” and the absent food citizen: immigrants in urban food policy discourse. Agric Hum Values (2024).
Read more here. See also the TABLE explainer, What is agroecology?
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