Food and Immigrant Life: The Role of Food in Forced Migration, Migrant Labor, and Recreating Home

The conference will examine the complex relationships between food and migration. Food scarcity is not only at the root of much human displacement and migration—the food industry also offers immigrants an entry point into the U.S. economic system and it, simultaneously, confines migrants to low wages and poor, if not unsafe, work conditions. In addition, food allows immigrants to maintain their cultural identity. The conference places issues of immigration and food service work in the context of a broader social justice agenda and explores the cultural role food plays in expressing cultural heritage.
The keynote address will be given by Dolores Huerta, co-founder and first Vice President Emeritus of United Farm Workers of America, on Thursday, April 18 at 6:00pm.
Conference participants include Aurora Almendral, Sean Basinski, Yong Chen,Alexandra Délano, Hasia Diner, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, James C. Hathaway, Saru Jayaraman, Ellen Ernst Kossek, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Arup Maharatna, Fabio Parasecoli, Jeffrey Pilcher, Dwaine Plaza, Krishnendu Ray, Monique Truong, Koko Warner, and Tiphanie Yanique. The complete conference program and speakers' bios are available online.
The New School’s Center for Public Scholarship and the Food Studies Program presents this conference in collaboration with the Writing Program, India China Institute, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, Center for New York City Affairs, Global Studies Program, Gender Studies Program, and International Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Citizenship (ICMEC).
The New School, 80 Fifth Avenue, Room 501, New York, NY 10011

Food and Immigrant Life Conference Program

Thursday, April 18, 2013

2:15-5:00 p.m. Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
Session 1: FOOD SCARCITY AND MIGRATION
Throughout history, lack of food has led to population migration. Today migrant workers play a crucial role in food production, often working under extreme conditions and out of the public eye.
A. Food Scarcity and Migration
Arup Maharatna, professor, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (India); author, The Demography of Famines: An Indian Historical Perspective (OUP, 1996)

[ + ]  Summary

B. Climatic Change, Food and Livelihood Insecurity, and Human Mobility: New Findings and Implications for Policy
Koko Warner, head of the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability, and Adaptation Section, United Nations University–Institute for Environment and Human Security

[ + ]  Summary

C. International Refugee Law and the Right to Food
James Hathaway, James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law and director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law, University of Michigan Law School
Moderator: Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, professor of international affairs, The New School for Public Engagement
6:00-7:30 p.m. Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street
Session 2: KEYNOTE ADDRESS ON THE PLIGHT OF MIGRANT FARMWORKERS
In the United States, the restaurant industry and the agricultural industry, including the increasingly numerous farmers' markets, depend on migrant workers. They perform most of the hard physical work, usually out of view of the consumer, while their position in society is marginal at best.
Dolores Huerta, co-founder (with César Chávez) and first vice president emeritus, United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO (UFW); president, Dolores Huerta Foundation
Moderator: Saru Jayaraman, director, Food Labor Research Center, UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education; co-founder and co-director, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United); author, Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press)

Friday, April 19, 2013

10:00 a.m.-12:45 p.m. Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street
Session 3: FOOD BUSINESS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM: GATEWAY OR OBSTACLE?
Migrants engage in small-scale food production and open small restaurants as a way of achieving economic independence and creating economic opportunities for their children.
A. Migrant Workers in the Kitchen
Saru Jayaraman, director, Food Labor Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education; co-founder and co-director, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United); author, Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press)
B. Migrant Women's Labor
Ellen Ernst Kossek, Basil S. Turner Professor of Management, Krannert School of Management & Research, and director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence, Purdue University

[ + ]  Summary

C. The Immigrant Restaurateur and the American City: Taste, Toil, and the Politics of Inhabitance
Krishnendu Ray, associate professor and chair, Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University; author, The Migrant's Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households (Temple University Press, 2004)
D. New York City Food Cart Vendors
Sean Basinski, lawyer; founder and director, Street Vendor Project, Urban Justice Center
Moderator: Alexandra Délano, assistant professor of global studies and coordinator, International Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Citizenship (ICMEC), The New School for Social Research; author, Mexico and Its Diaspora (CUP, 2011)
Your Food Is on Its Way
12:45-2:45 p.m. (Vera List Courtyard, adjacent to the John Tishman auditorium lobby) The Vera List Center for Art and Politics presents a project by artist Annie Shaw on the livelihoods of deliverymen in the food industry. Food delivery is part of the fabric of life in New York City, a service provided by a transient workforce that remains largely invisible to the public it serves. The very statement “your food is on its way” avoids any reference to the person delivering the meals. This project exposes the material reality of four individual deliverymen's physical labor through the tools they use, the routes they take, the money they make, the languages they speak, and the food they consume.
2:45-5:00 p.m. Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street
Session 4: RE-CREATING HOME IN THE UNITED STATESMany immigrants cope with the dislocation and disorientation they experience by using food to re-create a sense of home and identity. This panel explores how migrant cultures produce and reproduce a familiar sense of place in their domestic environment through cooking and other food-related practices.
A. Food, Identity, and Cultural Reproduction
Fabio Parasecoli, associate professor and coordinator of Food Studies, The New School for Public Engagement; author of The History of Food in Italy: Place, Power, Identity (forthcoming)
B. "Old Stock" Tamales and Migrant Tacos: Preserving Traditions in the Nineteenth-Century Southwest and Recreating Home in Present-Day “Manhatitlán”
Jeffrey Pilcher, professor of history, University of Minnesota; author, Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (OUP, 2012)

[ + ]  Summary

C. "Roti and Doubles" as Comfort Foods for the Trinidadian Diaspora in Canada and the United States
Dwaine Plaza, professor of sociology, Oregon State University

[ + ]  Summary

D. Re-creating the Chinese Home
Yong Chen, associate professor of history and Asian American studies, University of California, Irvine; author, Chinese San Francisco 1850-1943: A Transpacific Community (Stanford, 2000)
Moderator: Hasia Diner, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies and history, Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History, and director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History, New York University
6:00-7:30 p.m.  Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street
Session 5: WRITERS ON FOOD AND MIGRATIONA panel of notable writers read fiction and nonfiction in which food is used to explore community building, alienation, and assimilation among immigrants to the United States and other countries. The panel is presented by the School of Writing at The New School for Public Engagement.
Panelists:
Aurora Almendral, freelance writer, documentary film director, and journalist for Feet in 2 Worlds
Monique Truong, author of Bitter in the Mouth (Random House, 2010) and The Book of Salt (Houghton Mifflin, 2003)
Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody's Daughter (Beacon Press, 2006)
Tiphanie Yanique, assistant professor, School of Writing; author of How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Graywolf Press, 2010)
Moderator: Luis Jaramillo, associate chair, Writing Program, The New School; co-editor of the journal The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food