Food Circuits: Hidden Connections between Migrants and Societies

Project Information

FOODCIRCUITS

Grant agreement ID: 101045424

DOI

10.3030/101045424

EC signature date 13 October 2022

Start date 1 February 2023

End date 31 January 2028

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 017 409,00

EU contribution

€ 2 017 409,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FOODCIRCUITS (Food Circuits: Hidden Connections between Migrants and Societies)

Reporting period: 2023-02-01 to 2025-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Integration, radicalization, inclusion, exclusion, and discrimination—we think we understand the relationships between migrants and societies, but in many ways, we do not. Much research focuses either on migrants' experiences or on societal perceptions, yet the connections between them remain hidden and largely unexplored.

FOODCIRCUITS examines the crucial but often overlooked relations between migrants and the societies of which they form part. To explore these connections, the project focuses on specific fruits and vegetables and all the people who come in contact with them, including migrant farmworkers, farmers, transportation and supply chain workers, as well as consumers and beyond. The project, thereby, focuses on the study of food production, transportation and consumption. The COVID-19 pandemic temporarily exposed how societies depend on migrant food laborers, as border closures disrupted food supply chains, thereby revealing the fact that migrant peoples’ essential roles in feeding many societies is typically invisibilized. These workers frequently face precarious conditions while consumers tend not to acknowledge their contributions in everyday food consumption. By examining the circulation of fruit and vegetables—German asparagus, Spanish oranges, and California strawberries—this project uncovers the embodied experiences of migrant farmworkers, supply chain workers, and consumers, not only examining the multiple ways in which all of these groups are connected and related, but also analyzing the ways in which these connections become hidden.

By tracing what we conceptualize as food circuits, we analyze labor conditions, transportation networks, and consumer practices, comparing migration patterns and food systems across three contexts: Germany-Austria-Romania, Spain-Morocco/Ecuador, and California-Mexico. This approach offers a new way of understanding the deep but obscured connections between migrants and the societies of which they form part—through the beauty, brutality, and necessity of food.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

For the first two years of FOODCIRCUITS, our team has focused on the analysis of conceptual, ethnographic and methodological as well as public news and official document sources on the project’s themes, initial site visits, the beginning of in-depth fieldwork, and the launching of the collaborative research arm of the project. The team consists of three postdoctoral researchers and one PhD researcher, each investigating a specific food circuit, alongside a visual ethnographer producing research-based documentary films from the entire project and the Principal Investigator (PI).

Fieldwork is structured into three six-month phases: production, transportation, and consumption. Research is progressing across all field sites—Germany, Austria, California, and Spain. Once fieldwork is complete, the team will analyze the data and produce academic publications, as well as public-facing dissemination, including the ethnographic documentary films.

Simultaneously, we are advancing new understandings of the relationships between migrants and the societies of which they form part, presenting findings at international conferences and working on special issues under contract with top journals. The PI has already published articles based on FOODCIRCUITS research and integrated new chapters reflecting these insights into the recently released French edition of his book, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies:
Holmes, S. M. (2024), Fruits frais, corps brisés—Les ouvriers agricoles migrants aux États-Unis (CNRS éditions).

Beyond academic contributions, FOODCIRCUITS prioritizes innovative collaborative research methodologies, which are important for finding new ethical ways to navigate power hierarchies in research because they help ensure that migrant workers participate in the representation their experiences on their own terms. A major achievement is the development of the “Food Workers in Residence Program”, which brings migrant farmworker families into scholarly discussions with the research team as experts in their own right. In its first edition, a Romanian migrant farmworker family—who has worked in Germany and Austria—joined our team at the University of Barcelona, contributing to the team’s theoretical and analytical discussions. Furthermore, the team is also developing participatory visual ethnographic methods, allowing participants to produce notes, photographs, video and audio recordings that contribute to a more multi-faceted account of their labor and lives.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

FOODCIRCUITS is advancing new conceptual frameworks that not only describe and make visible the relationships between migrants and the societies of which they form part, but also examine how the environment both shapes and is shaped by these interactions. In this regard, we are developing new concepts and frameworks capable of describing the reciprocal relationships between society and the environment, illustrating their simultaneous impact on different kinds of bodies—human, water, and land. This approach aims to describe how climate change simultaneously emerges from human activities and social dynamics that are, in turn, shaped by its effects. The PI has been invited to present this conceptual development at the College de France in 2025 during a conference on the social production of health inequalities.

Intensive agriculture is a key site that exemplifies this dynamic. Researchers have shown, for example, the environmental and health impacts of water and pesticide usage. As a consequence, agriculture faces and adapts itself to the changing environmental conditions that it has contributed to produce. These events transform agriculture and impact the working conditions of migrant farmworkers, increasing risks such as heat exposure and revealing the uneven distribution of the effects of climate change. We are developing approaches that examine how social structures drive environmental change, which in turn reshapes social dynamics—often disproportionately harming the same groups that these structures and hierarchies already vulnerabilize. Thereby, the wellbeing of societies and the environment are intimately interrelated.

FOODCIRCUITS is also re-thinking migration as a fundamental and ongoing reality of contemporary European and North American societies. Instead of studying the experiences of migrants and societal perceptions and reactions separately, we are focusing on the ways in which migration structures societies and economies. Thereby, migration is not understood as an external phenomenon that changes societies, but as an integral and historical part of contemporary Western societies, highlighting the invisibilized connections and dependencies between societies and migrants, including their bodily labor. Within this perspective, migrant farmworkers and supply chain workers are vital to the sustenance and survival of Europe and North American societies. This approach not only highlights these contemporary relations, but also brings to light the historical presence and roles of migrant workers in societies that may still consider them outsiders.