Paper short abstract:

This is a reflection on the transcontinental process of co-creating and co-curating a recipe book with 8 forced migrant women in South Africa. The intention here is to explore opportunities and obstacles that emerge when collaborating with migrant communities despite and beyond the pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

Covid-19 is reframing critical engagement with migrant communities in South Africa. As the marginalization of migrant communities is been exacerbated, academic practices that aim to contribute to the societal inclusion of migrants face new challenges, especially when seeking respectful, reciprocal, and sustainable ways of collaborating in the local context. In this paper, I reflect on my own experience on seeking more critical engagement with migrants during the pandemic. The focus here is on Food for Change, an engaged project where eight forced migrant women based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, were encouraged and supported to share cooking recipes of their choice through online platforms. In response to the pandemic and with the objective to work as closely as possible with the women, we developed an online dialogue that resulted in a co-created and co-curated recipe book. Behind such initiative to share their culinary knowledge, the dialogue in Food for Change offers a layered experience on reimaging opportunities and obstacles to engage with migrant communities despite and beyond the pandemic. This enables reflections around how online means present alternatives of interconnection, while significant limitations highlight power imbalances that prevail despite good intentions in transcontinental collaboration. Moreover, this paper advocates for an emphasis on the interpersonal relationships built within co-creative processes as meaningful spaces on their own where the epistemological and ontological dimensions of decolonization can be grounded in daily practices of reciprocal care and solidarity.