Project description
The hidden food connection to immigrant integration
Immigrants play an important role in planting, harvesting and transporting fruits and vegetables across the EU and North America. However, their role remains hidden. The EU-funded FOODCIRCUITS project will study the connections between immigrants and the societies of which they form part to understand how these connections become invisibilised. The project will focus on asparagus from Germany, oranges from Spain and strawberries from California to investigate the embodied experiences of migrant farm labourers, supply chain workers and consumers. FOODCIRCUITS proposes a new way of seeing social and embodied links between migrants and societies by developing a theory of connections and re-conceptualising how indirect connections between different categories of people are made invisible.
Objective
Most fruit and vegetables required and enjoyed by European and North American societies would not be possible without the planting, harvesting and transporting performed by migrant labourers. Yet, the contribution of migrants to crucial food systems is generally hidden in the experience of buying and consuming food. In this project, I take asparagus from Germany, oranges from Spain and strawberries from California as the vantage points from which to see connections between migrants and societies as well as the ways in which those connections become invisibilized. I focus on embodied experiences in food circuits in order to understand the labour of producing and transporting food and the process of consuming and incorporating food into oneself. Tracing asparagus, oranges and strawberries through their circulation, I investigate the embodied experiences of migrant farm labourers – who are treated simultaneously as essential, disposable and sometimes prohibited; supply chain workers – who are made up increasingly of migrants and work under tight delivery time constraints; and consumers – who eat with diverse intentions of survival, enjoyment, identity and ethics. I propose a new way of seeing social and embodied connections between migrants and societies – through the beauty, brutality and necessity of food. With FOODCIRCUITS, I will provide novel contributions on three primary fronts:
(i) developing a theory of connections between migrants and societies – including on embodied levels – by following fruit and vegetables as they circulate from the hands that pick them, through the arms that deliver them to the mouths that eat them;
(ii) re-conceptualizing the ways in which indirect connections between different categories of people are invisibilized through the infrastructures and processes of producing, transporting and consuming food;
(iii) expanding collaborative methods and ethics in field research across steep social and power hierarchies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture horticulture fruit growing
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture horticulture vegetable growing
- social sciences sociology demography human migrations
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2021-COG
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08007 Barcelona
Spain
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