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- Convenors:
-
Martina Bofulin
(Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU))
Simeng Wang (The French National Centre for Scientific Research)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Mobilities
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
The panel examines how a restaurant enables symbolic and material inclusion of migrants by addressing various aspects of the process within which migrants not only meet, work and socialize with non‑migrants but also engage in meaning- and memory-making in and with their new surroundings.
Long Abstract:
In public discourses, restaurants have long been seen as emblematic of migrants' presence and work, either as "ethnic" food establishments or as consumers of cheap migrant labor. While much has been written on the connection of food and displaced populations, substantially less is known about the symbolic and material circumstances of the link between migration and the restaurant, where "sensual and local, symbolic and global meet" and "where an exchange of culture and practices of social distinction take place" (Beriss and Sutton 2007). The panel seeks to examine how a restaurant enables symbolic and material inclusion of migrants by addressing economic, social, and cultural aspects of the process within which migrants not only meet, work, socialize and negotiate with non‑migrants but also engage in meaning- and memory-making in and with their new surroundings. We invite papers which discuss the ethnic restaurants' set up, the migrant labor in the catering industry, the cultural encounters between migrants and non-migrants as well as the transformations brought about the coronavirus pandemic that profoundly changed the ways we produce and consume food and also made migrants' positions within catering industry even more precarious.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the impact of COVID-19 on the social inclusion and exclusion of a marginalized group, Korean food entrepreneurs in Berlin, Germany. How does the global crisis shape locally the integration and marginality of migrant food entrepreneurs?
Paper long abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted almost all parts of the society, but even harder marginalized population. This paper investigates the impact of COVID-19 on the social inclusion and exclusion of a marginalised group, Korean food entrepreneurs in Berlin, Germany. How does the global crisis shape locally the integration and marginality of migrant food entrepreneurs? From in-depth interviews with more than ten owners and employees of Korean restaurants in Berlin, this paper seeks to explore the consequences of the pandemic in 2020 to the Asian immigrants in Germany. They experience COVID-19 with uncertainty and economic losses, similar to other restaurant owners. However, anti-Asian discrimination and racism that became more visible and vulnerable with the pandemic set distinct conditions for them. To overcome the drawback of customers and income, some restaurants provide their food with limited options, such as take-out and delivery service. In some cases, the pandemic accelerates trust and solidarity among the restaurants and local customers. With the second wave of COVID-19 and general lockdown in November 2020, the situation is developing in a more critical stand than in the first wave. The unequal access to information and communication with the local authority, discrimination, interaction with the locals all shape various experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paper short abstract:
In Japan's foremost global city, migrant restaurateurs play an outsized role in the creation of social spaces where Japanese and non-Japanese interact. Migrant-run restaurants are enablers and shapers of social interactions, and migrant restaurateurs are key cultural intermediaries.
Paper long abstract:
In Japan's foremost global city, migrant restaurateurs play an outsized role in the creation of social spaces where Japanese and non-Japanese interact. Migrant-run restaurants are enablers and shapers of social interactions, and migrant restaurateurs are key cultural intermediaries. This paper is based on a long-term ethnographic study of independent restaurant owners in Tokyo neighborhood. The focus here is on migrant-owned restaurants and their interactions with patrons. Several factors influence how migrant restaurants work as spaces of social interaction among patrons and management: (1) the scale of the social space, (2) the mix of clientele, (3) the population mix in the surrounding community, (4) the social construction of ethnic, racial and cultural hierarchies, (5) the norms of interaction that are particular to restaurant consumption, (6) the patterns of consumption of alcohol and assorted sociability. All of these factors are important in understanding the particular nature of ethnic food consumption and migrant entrepreneurship in Tokyo.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on new materialism and my fieldwork on Asian restaurants in California, this paper examines how the instrumental relations between immigrants (subjects), ethnic food (objects), and the restaurant setting/aura (environment) engender subtle and ambiguous political effects in global capitalism.
Paper long abstract:
Current literature on new materialism tends to adopt an ethos of “democratic non-instrumentality” that renders a linear political trajectory of matter and objects that is detached from the instrumental effects of global capitalism. Drawing on my fieldwork on the Asian restaurant industry in Southern California (USA), this paper examines how the instrumental relations between immigrants (subjects), ethnic food (objects), and the restaurant setting/aura (environment) engender subtle and ambiguous political effects. This constellation of what I call “elastic instrumentality” in ethnic restaurants (composed of the triadic elements of posthumanist co-enactment, affective economy, and culturally vibrant biosociality) enables immigrants to improvise their “citizenly contributions” and “nonexistent rights” (i.e., rights that are not yet existing or codified in law such as the rights to enterprise, work, consumption, residency, affective inclusion, biological wellbeing, and sociocultural belong) in imperceptible and circuitous ways, signaling a complex and protean formation of posthumanist politics in global capitalism. Calling this immigrant improvisation “elastic citizenship,” the paper argues that the uncovering of this fluid and complex dynamic helps stretch and expand our conception of the posthumanist political horizon in terms of the agents of politics (e.g., including immigrant restaurateurs, cooks, bussers, dishwashers, servers, customers, ethnic food, culinary ingredients, ethnic cookware and utensils), the sites of politics (e.g., including ethnic-based commercial establishments), and the ways of being political (e.g., including the everyday practices of producing and consuming ethnic food).
Paper short abstract:
Migratory experience in an anglophone migrants bar, where the migrants became not only regular to the bar but have reshaped the materiality as well as the social network of the bar. Bar as a place in time and space of real physical contact of a migratory network.
Paper long abstract:
The paper is based on six months-long field research in 2013 in the capital of the Czech Republic. Research of a bar mainly visited by anglophone migrants. Anglophone migration (USA, Britain, Australia ...) is privileged with no economic struggle in the Czech Republic. Although most of the bar regulars have been in the Czech Republic since the early 2000s, they are not entirely integrated into the Czech society, and they do not have a good command of the Czech language. Their economic activities are connected to cosmopolitan institutions and are based on the knowledge of the English language. I aim to reveil how being regular to a bar is helping the migrants to adapt to the new country and maintain there life in their new country.
A group of migrants have situated important practices into the space of the bar through which they form their meaning and memory in the new place, new home. They have domesticated the place to the extent that they have their own spaces, glasses, and any newcomer, Czech or migrant, is watched by the regulars and evaluated.
The bar is playing the role of intimacy, home-like, and have been materially changed by the migrants. They have also situated their social network into the bar, it has been made mainly by migrants but also locals, Czechs. The bar is a place where migrants social bonds are performed and materialised. It is a place in time and space of real physical contact of a migratory network.
Paper short abstract:
An ethnic restaurant is a place where a resident’s ethnicity is actualized. Using Caucasian restaurants in St Petersburg as a case study, the talk raises the question of how does a representation of ethnicity ‘for their own group’ (primarily migrants) and ‘for locals’ work.
Paper long abstract:
In a restaurant serving a national cuisine, one may conveniently identify people’s instrumental attitude towards ‘their own’ and ‘other people’s’ ethnicities. Using Caucasian restaurants in St Petersburg as a case study, the talk raises the question of how does a representation of ethnicity ‘for their own group’ and ‘for locals’ work. Another aim is to describe the difference between these representations in Azerbaijani, Armenian, Georgian, and other Caucasian restaurants, taking into account postcolonial and transnational contexts.
The more the restaurant is orientated towards the ‘outside’ customer, the more markers of ethnicity are activated. If a restaurant is orientated towards ‘their own’, it is less important to be consistent in the contents of the menu, the interior, or the way the waiters are dressed. Nor can one ignore the economic component in the division of restaurants into these categories ‘for us’ and ‘for them’. Cheap restaurants are left with their names, their cuisine, and their regular customers in the form of relatives, friends, and fellow-countrymen. While the owners of an expensive restaurant can think more carefully about the correspondence between the items on the menu and the advertised cuisine, hire professional artists to create an ‘ethnically colored’ interior, and order ‘suitable’ cutlery and uniforms for the waiting staff, etc. The paradox is that those ‘others’ are inclined to look for authenticity in ethnic restaurants to the extent to which they are orientated towards ‘their own people’.