Paper Short Abstract:

This paper looks at the discourses and practices developed around the food transition in the city of Liège to explore the extent to which migrants are included or excluded from this process, as well as the ways in which sustainability is re-defined by diverse profiles of local residents.

Paper Abstract:

The city of Liège in Belgium has been involved for several years in the cities-in-transition movement, through the development of a series of local initiatives (reflecting international actions and embedded in international networks) aimed at transforming the local food system to meet the current challenges related to climate change. Recently, these initiatives, which in practice and in related representations are generally associated with the local educated middle class, have been questioned by their promoters in order to assess their inclusivity – and thus their potential to engage larger parts of the local population. At the same time, contradictory discourses on migrant food practices are developing, pointing on the one hand to practices that need to be changed and on the other hand to traditions that may have been lost in modern Western countries and that may contribute to additional resilience. In this context, ethnographic research allows to highlight the specific ways in which the process of food transition develops in the city, the characteristics of the narratives mobilised to shape and disseminate it, as well as the ways in which it interacts with food projects organised with or targeted at (female) migrant people. In analysing the collected material, particular attention will be paid to the redefinition of sustainability through the mobilisation of memories and notions of health elaborated from different intersectional social positions.