Settling Down in the Netherlands: relationships between food, body and place in a transnational context

Many scholars recognize that food activities can shape the immigrant’s relationship with their surroundings – both the homeland and the relocated environment (Probyn, 1999; Madsen, 2003; Pascali, 2006; Longhurst et al., 2007). In this proposed research, Hung will investigate the relationships between the immigrants’ foodscapes, processes of homemaking, and growing sense of belonging in the Netherlands. Although much research into the relationship between food and homemaking has been conducted, it has mostly focused on the socio-cultural context (Pascali, 2006; Longhurst et al., 2007; Raman, 2011). This study will introduce a spatiotemporal context. Also, most research on food and immigrants in the Netherlands has considered one ethnicity or nationality as the study group (Nicolaou et al., 2012; Visser et al., 2015; Bailey, 2017); this study will work with immigrants who have a legal partnership with a Dutch citizen in the Netherlands regardless of ethnicity/nationality.

This research is expected to produce insights on 1) what ‘homemaking’ and ‘belonging’ mean for the study group; 2) how they experience, illustrate, and describe their foodscapes; and 3) how foodscapes influence the process of homemaking and the growing of sense of belonging. Since this research will concentrate on embodied actions and place, an ethnographic approach will be employed as the primary methodological design and creative/artistic methods will be applied in research activities.