FOOD2GATHER: Exploring foodscapes as public spaces for integration

FOOD2GATHER explores the relations between food and public spaces in the context of migration. Through a myriad of food-related practices it addresses the way people connect with others and the environment physically, socially, politically and symbolically. FOOD2GATHER aims to problematize food as a potential driver of opportunities for intercultural communication and interaction – and as a driver for inclusion and exclusion processes in European societies.

To broaden our understanding, FOOD2GATHER will build on and adapt the concept of ‘foodscapes’. Foodscapes are constructed places wherein food practices, values, meanings and representations intersect with the material and environmental realities that sustain the experience of food. FOOD2GATHER therefore considers foodscapes as crucial agents in the construction of dynamic and reciprocal relationships in local communities in Europe today. We see foodscapes as socially, empirically and symbolically interlinked processes that are never fixed but that will develop throughout the project.

Through different but complementary ethnographic studies of public spaces in six European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway), this project addresses the potentialities of foodscapes for creating (or not) new conditions for living together.