Brief Summary

CJMC 5 (2+3) pp. 201-211 In tellect Limited 2014

C ro s s in g s : J o u r n a l o f M i g r a t i o n & C u lt u r e

V o lu m e 5 N u m b e r s 2 & 3

© 2014 In te lle c t Ltd Article. English language, doi: io .i38 6/cjm c.5.2-3 .2 oi_ i

A N N E ], KERSHEN1 Queen Mary University of London

Food in the British immigrant experience

ABSTRACT The relationship between migration and food is one that takes m a n y form s. For the m igrant in Britain food has played a much greater role than sim ply providing nour ishm ent on a regular basis. This article illustrates the w a y in w hich, fo r migrants, food has contributed to the construction and perception o f outsider identity; how it has been used as a weapon by the racist and xenophobic, yet fo r other incomers has been the source o f entrepreneurial wealth. In addition, it highlights the w ay in w hich food has contributed to cultural fu sio n and cultural separation as well as to religious tolerance and antipathy.

KEYWORDS migration immigrants food ethnicity identity religion racism entrepreneurialism

Since prehistoric times food has played a major part in the migrant experience. Throughout history humankind has been propelled into movement in order to procure for self and family. Over the centuries, food scarcity has been a major push factor in hum an migration. In the 1840s the Irish potato famine drove hundreds of thousands of the population across the Atlantic and the Irish Channel. Some 130 years later, in 1974, two million people in Bangladesh left their homes to find food, some walking more than 100 miles (Atkins and Bowler 2000:133). As the second decade of the twenty-first century progresses, the search for food still drives the desperate. The Famine Early Warning Network System highlights Central America and the Caribbean, as well as ten countries in Africa, as being locations where food insecurity at moderate and high levels afflicts millions of men, women and children.2 While, at the

1. A n e a r lie r v e r s io n o f th is a r tic le a p p e a re d in Food and History (2 0 0 9 :2 1 1 -2 4 ,7 :1 )

2. A m o n g s t th e l is t o f c o u n tr ie s th e F a m in e E a rly W a rn in g S ystem id e n tifie s a re G uin ea, L ib e ria , M a u rita n ia , C e n tra l A fric a n R e p u b lic a n d S o m a lia .

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3. Bruce Hindm arsh has shown how English convicts in A ustra lia developed strategies w hereby th e ir w o rk on farm s in New South Wales and Van D iem en’s Land (now Tasmania) provided them w ith econom ic be nefits (see H indm arsh 2002).

4. The m yth , if n o t the reality.

time of writing, it is still too early to assess the impact of the Ebola disease on crops and food supplies in West Africa. Yet, history has shown that hunger is not the only food-related force that drives migration. Perceived economic opportunity, through the importing and exporting of exotic foodstuffs and in the transportation of culinary cultures, has been, and continues to be, a deter minant in the migration decision-making process.

The relationship between migration and food stretches far beyond the hunger, satiation and economic activity landscape. It is fashioned by religion and culture, and, as such, impacts on identity and physical well-being. Yet food can also smother cultural and ethnic differences, by McDonaldization - an imposition which 'overwhelms local and regional experience' (Cook and Crang 1996:131-56) - or through fusion, when the other is forced to conform to local and national dietary practices and characteristics. The migrant has not been the only actor on the migration and food stage; throughout the centuries indigenes have used the migrant diet as a weapon with which to attack the outsider. In this article I will examine the diverse ways in which food has impacted on the processes of settlement and integration undergone by immigrants in Britain, at times facilitating and at other times inhibiting the crossing of cultural boundaries. Given the limitations of space the explora tion will be restricted to issues of identity, economic activity, health, religion and xenophobia.

In order to fully comprehend the role that food has played in migration to Britain, it is beneficial to identify the typologies of migrant and the theories that have been produced in order to account for the movement of people. If we understand where migrants have come from and why they have come, then we are better able to evaluate their successes and failure - both on their terms and on ours. There are two basic headings migrants are filed under - voluntary and involuntary. Historically, it is the involuntary migrant that has had the strongest links with food. The list stretches back to the African slaves transported to the sugar plantations of North America and the Caribbean from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, British convicts shipped to Australia in the nineteenth century,3 German prisoners of war in World Wars I and II working on farms as prisoners of war, and trafficking labour in the twenty- first century. It is not just the forced migrant whose initial work experience is that of exploitation and low pay. Picking and packing potatoes, or working in the steamy kitchens of Bangladeshi-owned and - run Indian restaurants, is a choice made eagerly by many new arrivals at the start of their journey to economic prosperity in Britain.4 The next step in the classification of migrant types leads us to a multiplicity of headings: these include the skilled, the unskilled, the professional, the student, those escaping from religious, politi cal and gender persecution, and the minority seeking 'sun, sand and sangria'.

For over 75 per cent of those who leave home for elsewhere the push factor is economic mobility. But those engaged in migration research require more than this. As migration patterns have grown ever more complex in a globalized world the number of migration theories has multiplied. They now range from Ravenstein's Laws of Migration, first pronounced in 1885 - and since known as the 'push and pull' theory - to the neo-classical, economically bound theories of the 1970s, the Marxist-inspired historical structuralist theo ries of the same period through to theories that accommodate the postmodern globalized world and seek to explain the phenomena of transnationalism and household strategies, and, more recently, those that explore the emergence of what has become, in many places, a super-diverse migrant population

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(Vertovec 2006: 2). Cognizance of the theoretical and empirical implications of the migrant passage enables us to evaluate the ways in which food has impacted on the lives of both immigrants and the receiving society.

FOOD AND IDENTITY If we are what we eat, then what we eat must play a part in the identification process. However, it is questionable as to whether our sense of self-identity changes when we are 'eating the other'. Does the nijab wearing young woman question her identity because she has a bowl of cornflakes for break fast? Do beer drinking, curry eating British nationalists become any less extreme after an 'Indian and a Kingfisher' [Indian beer]? Do the latter feel any empathy with those who are cooking the food or are their xenophobic senti ments heightened by being waited upon by members of an ethnic minority? Allison James has stated, 'Food marks out cultural identities, they eat/we eat' (1997: 9); thus, food must be seen as a marker of ethnic difference. Whether the style of cuisine and the ownership of the restaurant is Bengali, Goan, Gujarati, Kashmiri or Punjabi, irrespective of the fact that the subcontinent is now divided into Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to British diners, they are having an 'Indian'.

For those in an alien land, diet is one means of preserving identity and links with home. Italian, German and Eastern European immigrants in the nine teenth century openly maintained their culinary customs as a form of ethnic identity, though at times this gave rise to xenophobic responses. Conversely, in the late twentieth century, Iranian immigrants, conscious that their dietary culture and traditions did not find favour with the British population, sought to disguise and protect their own ethnicity in the public space, investing their entrepreneurial energies in cooking and marketing non-Iranian food in pizza and burger bars; often working with food, their Shi'ite religious teachings did not permit them to eat (Caplan 1997: 90), reserving their dietary culture for the private space. For it is within the private sphere that the eating and cere mony of ethnic diet enables the retention of links with, and memories of, kith, kin and homelands left behind. Indeed, the food of home is one of the last links with 'over there' to be relinquished.

MIGRANTS, FOOD AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY An exploration of the economic activity of immigrants in Britain shows that in the context of food, a graph of upward mobility can be drawn from the early small-scale food outlets established by the entrepreneurial migrant to satisfy the demands of an emerging minority community through to the large-scale manufacturer catering for national and international markets. This is not to suggest that all small businesses become large scale, or that all immigrant food producers or sellers are ultimately successful. Throughout history only those with good fortune and the ability to recognize the same - the mix often flavoured with a pinch of ruthlessness - have flourished. However, there is a discernible template, one that can be traced back to the fifteenth century and the beer brewing industry. Beer brewing was introduced to England by Dutch immigrants satisfying the tastes of their fellow countrymen who had no liking for English ale. By the late sixteenth century, beer had become part of the English diet, and concerns were being voiced over the number of 'aliens' - both apprentices and owners - engaged in its production. The response to this economic xenophobia was a ban on the admission of new aliens into brewery

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5. H o w e v e r, i t s h o u ld be n o te d t h a t in a d d itio n t o th e p o p u la r it y o f In d ia n a n d C hine se fo o d , B ritis h d in e rs n o w e n jo y T h a i, M e xica n , T u rk is h a n d G reek, a n d th e p r o d u c t o f g lo b a liz a tio n , fu s io n c o o k in g , o n e v e ry re c e n t e x a m p le o f w h ic h b e in g th e o p e n in g o f r e s ta u r a n t in th e C ity o f L o n d o n - o n th e 3 5 th f lo o r o f o n e o f th e a re a ’s n e w e s t b u il d i n g s - w h ic h b o a s ts its s ty le o f fo o d as a fu s io n o f B ra z ilia n , P e ru v ia n a n d Japanese, a n d go es b y t h e n a m e o f S ushiS am b a.

guilds and on the number of foreign-owned breweries. By the seventeenth century, beer brewing had been fully absorbed into the English economy and English culture (Luu 2002).

Other examples of food businesses that were rooted within migrant communities and then expanded beyond ethnic boundaries are of a more recent nature. Chinese settlers arrived in Britain in the eighteenth century, when labourers and lascars employed by the East India Company began to settle close to the docks in London and Liverpool. However, it was not until the 1930s that the community grew to any significant size, and not until after World War II that immigrant Chinese economic activity transferred from laundries to food. The post-war period in Britain is significant for the change in eating habits of the indigenous population. By the 1970s, eating out was no longer restricted to the affluent; it had become a part of the general populace's way of life, the most popular eateries being ethnic Chinese and Indian. When the number of Chinese restaurants had reached saturation point, their owners looked for other ways to maintain or expand their economic viability. One such was the Win Yip Group, which evolved from a small company opened in Birmingham in 1970 (Chan 2002: 194) to cater for local Chinese families and restaurants to one which, in 2014, has four large superstores in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Croydon, a 4500 product line and, in addi tion to the British markets, now distributes throughout Europe and Australia (www.winyip.com., 2014; Chan 2002).

It is difficult to determine which ethnic food is more popular, Indian or Chinese.5 The former too has it success stories that originate from within the South East Asian community. One such is that of Gulam Noon - now Baron Noon of St. John's Wood - an immigrant from Mubai (Bombay), who in 1973 established the Bombay Halwa Ltd (Royal Sweets) company in the Southall district of London. In 1989 Noon moved out of the specifically immigrant

Figure 1: Foods o f the World.

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market and founded N oon Products, initially with a range of just four chilled Indian style meals for retail outlets. The company now manufactures over 400 different chilled and frozen Indian and Oriental meals, predominantly under leading British supermarkets' own brand ranges (Noon 2014).6 Whilst busi nesses such as Noon and Win Yip have grown from the immigrants' own food culture, others have responded to the growth in eating out. Indian restaurants, serving food cooked for British palates, have become a major source of immi grant employment and income, particularly for the Bangladeshi community. Bangladeshi food is a £4 billion industry, with a vast majority of so-called Indian restaurants in Britain owned and run by Bangladeshis, who now proudly identify their roots by proclaiming their restaurants as Bangladeshi as opposed to the traditional, Indian. Currently there are some 10,500 Bangladeshi restaurants in Britain, employing 80,000 workers (The Guild of Bangladeshi Restaurateurs 2014), the majority owned and run by m en7 who come from the Sylhet region of Bangladesh.8 However, whilst new immigrants are recruited - and often exploited - as waiters and kitchen hands, there is a growing shortage of skilled chefs, as second- and third-generation Bengalis follow the pathway of earlier migrants and choose to become accountants, lawyers and doctors.

Food has also played a major role in the economic advancement of immi grants from Europe. For whilst few of the mid-nineteenth-century Italian penny ice cream vendors, who sold their wares to the poor of London and other leading cities, escaped from poverty, 100 years on, Charles Forte, who was bom in the Italian province of Frosinone, rose from Italian cafe owner to multi-billion pound company chairman. Food as an economic activity has been handed down over the centuries and Italian migrants in Britain have long asso ciations with the food trade, working as chefs, waiters and waitresses, as well as cafe and restaurant owners. By 1911, in London alone, the Italian food-related community included 1600 waiters, 900 chefs, 1400 bakers and confectioners,

6. T he C o m p a n y w as ta k e n o v e r b y th e Iris h - based K e rry G ro u p in 2005, b u t s t i l l r e ta in s its p r o d u c t n a m e .

7. T r a d itio n a lly , M u s lim m e n d o n o t b e c o m e in v o lv e d in th e d o m e s tic , p a r tic u la r ly e n te r in g th e k itc h e n . O w n in g a n d ru n n in g re s ta u r a n ts a n d d o in g th e c o o k in g is an e x a m p le o f th e w a y in w h ic h m ig r a tio n has c h a n g e d c u ltu r a l a n d re lig io u s p a tte rn s .

8. T he d iffe r e n c e in n u m b e rs is d u e t o th e d if f e r in g e s tim a te s p r o v id e d b y th e B ritis h r e s ta u r a n t a s s o c ia tio n a n d t h a t p r e s e n te d b y th e B a n g la d e s h i b u s in e s s g ro u p .

Figure 2: Indian restaurant.

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9. F o r fu r t h e r d e ta il o f th e p r a c tic e o f r itu a l s la u g h te r a n d th e o p p o s itio n i t has a ro u s e d (see, E n d e lm a n 2 0 0 2 :7 7 -9 7 ; K u s h n e r 1989:1 6-2 0).

and 500 cafe and restaurant owners. Whilst over the border in Scotland there were more than 1000 Italian ice cream parlours (Kershen 2003; 141).

The roots of the Eastern European Jewish community were established on the borders of the City and the East End of London when, in 1656, Jews were readmitted to England by Oliver Cromwell. By the late nineteenth century there was a myriad of Jewish food outlets centred around the Spitalfields district of the East End. These included fried fish shops, grocers, greengrocers, and 126 butchers and poulterers (Kershen 2005: 89-91), yet few succeeded as 'big-time' food entrepreneurs. One that did was Jacob Kohen, the son of an immigrant tailor. In 1919 he changed his name to John flack) Cohen and took over a stall in the East End of London. From that one outlet he expanded to four stalls and, in 1924, he adopted the company name of Tesco, its philosophy, 'pile it high and sell it cheap' (Corina 1978). At the time of writing Tesco employs 500,000 people and has 3370 outlets in the United Kingdom, as well as branches in Europe and Asia (Tesco 2014). W hat was begun as a market stall run by the son of an immigrant has grown into a multinational conglomerate.

FOOD A ND RELIGION

Food and religion are inextricably fused. Feasting and fasting are essential elements of religious practice, linking family and community. Even the most irreligious gather for Christmas Day lunch, Passover dinner, Diwali festivities and Eid ul Fitr at the end of Ramadan. But whilst religion has its joyous side, it also makes demands upon its adherents, these range from the necessity to conform to the complex dietary requirements of Halal (Muslim Law) and Kashrut (the food laws of the Jewish Halakah), and observance of fast days. The biblical dietary prescriptions transmitted through the Old Testament identify and separate. Throughout history these have served as a tool for those wishing to marginalize the religious outsider. In Spain in the early fifteenth century, 'Jewish' meat, conforming to the requirements of Halakah, was banned from Christian market stalls in Valencia (Montanari 1999: 190). The theme of denial of certain dietary constituents has resonance in m odem British history. Both Talmudic and Koranic laws require ritual slaughter; this rejects the stunning of the animal before it being put to death. The m ethod of slaughter, the cutting of the animal's windpipe and food pipe in one motion, 'w ithout delay or pauses', is abhorrent to many outside the religions, even though it is said to be painless.9 There have been regular attempts to intro duce a law which outlaws the practice of ritual slaughter, but so far these have been unsuccessful. Judaic and Islamic laws n ot only proscribe the way in which animals are to be slaughtered, they delineate the forbidden from the permitted foods by highlighting difference. This further separates observant migrants from the mainstream of British life, a situation which also applies to Hindus and Sikhs, who are forbidden beef and, as a result, frequently adopt a vegetarian or vegan way of life. In addition, religious holy days, some of which require fasting at the work place, others time taken off work, p ut further demands on the migrant and create tensions and cleavages.

M IGRANT HEALTH A ND M IGRANT DIET

Inevitably migration impacts on the health of the migrant. For the fortunate few who move to warmer climes and adopt the Mediterranean diet, the result is positive. However, for many of those who have migrated from the periph ery of what was the British Empire to the 'm other country', the outcome all

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too often has been negative, location, cost and change of diet all being factors which adversely affect the health of the migrant.

Research has revealed that ethnic minorities tend to cluster and reside a distance from superstores and shopping malls, where food is cheapest. Reliance is placed on the 'com er shop', whose owners are rarely able to compete with supermarket prices. In the past healthy foods rich in vitamins A, B, C and E have not been easy to find. Their shortage created health deficiencies, the effects of which are now being felt. There was a positive outcome, however, as migrant demand encouraged food entrepreneurs to import traditional fruits, vegetables and fish from overseas. Sadly, not all have benefited. For exam ple, foodstuff, such as fresh fish, which is flown in several times a week from Bangladesh, is expensive, and thus not all members of the community can afford to purchase the staple ingredients of their national diet. The alternative has tended to be the cheap convenience foods that are high in salt, saturated fats and sugar - all contributors to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Cost and location are not the only factors that have a negative impact on migrant health. Cultural change takes its toll too; all-butter croissants are taking the place of the breakfast chappti and halal burgers, and chips are favoured over hilsa10 for the main meal. The slender South East Asian child is disappearing and obesity is fast becoming as m uch a problem w ith the traditionally slim migrant group as it is for the indigenous population.11

Diet not only creates new health problems for non-Europeans, it also aggravates those that already exist. The incidence of diabetes is tradition ally higher amongst Asian immigrants than with their Caucasian counter parts. Research has shown that its level has increased further in the western environment. There are a num ber of reasons for this, change of diet being the most obvious. Another factor is language deficiency. Lack of fluency and literacy in English makes dietary guidance difficult, and medical recommen dations are not always understood or followed. Religious practice also makes its demands on the migrant adherents, sometimes to the disadvantage of the observer. Diabetes sufferers who elect to fast during Ramadan can create day-time hypoglycaemia,12 whilst the special Muslim sweets, such as khirlrice pudding and sugary vermicelli, can be harmful if medication is not altered accordingly (Connor et al. 2003: 798). It is perhaps a paradox that though migrants emigrate to improve their quality of life economically and physically, change of diet and lifestyle do not always act in the migrant's best interests. Mentally and physically the migrant experience affects the health of the immi grant. As the incomer strives to create a secure economic and social base for self and family, the maintenance of a healthy diet is either overlooked or out of financial reach.

10. H ils a is th e n a tio n a l fis h o f B a n g la d e s h , a v e ry o ily fis h ; i t is c o o k e d in a v a r ie ty o f w a ys.

11. In f o r m a tio n fro m D r V e ro n ic a W h ite , C o n s u lta n t a t th e B a rts a n d th e R oyal L o n d o n H o s p ita l, in c o n v e rs a tio n w it h th e a u th o r , u F e b ru a ry 2009.

12. F o r h e a lth re asons, p e o p le ca n be e x e m p te d fro m R a m a d a n fa s tin g a n d fr o m fa s t in g on th e Je w ish D a y o f A to n e m e n t; h o w e v e r, t h e r e a re th o s e w h o ch o o s e t o o b s e rv e th e re lig io u s rite s r a th e r th a n h e a lth re q u ire m e n ts .

MIGRANT FOOD AS AN XENOPHOBIC TOOL Food not only plays its part in the process of migrant settlement, it also contrib utes to xenophobic responses. Xenophobia is most commonly defined as a 'fear or hatred of strangers, people from other countries or of anything that is strange or foreign'. It is rarely discernible in the early stages of alien settlement, when numbers are small and the response of the receiving society one of curiosity sprinkled with suspicion. However, as the visible concentration of outsiders increases, and the interpretation of their presence shifts from that of tolerance to fear - fear of losing homes, of losing jobs, of alien diseases and cultures - the indigene identifies the less pleasant characteristics of the immigrant and uses

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13. I t m u s t be re m e m b e re d t h a t th e Iris h im m ig r a n ts w e re n o t a lie n s . B e tw e e n 1800 a n d 1922 th e y w e re B ritis h s u b je c ts as a ll o f Ire la n d w a s p a r t o f th e U n ite d K in g d o m . A fte r p a r titio n , Eire g a in e d in d e p e n d e n c e a n d N o r th e r n Ire la n d re m a in e d p a r t o f th e U n ite d K in g d o m .T h u s , i t has be e n sa id t h a t th e Iris h im m ig r a n ts o c c u p ie d a ‘ m id d le p la ce ', n o t a lie n s y e t s till o u ts id e rs .

14. P o ta to e s .

15. In th is c o n te x t th e ‘a lie n ’ w a s th e E astern E u ro p e a n Jew ish im m ig r a n t.

them as a weapon for both defence and attack. Over the centuries, facets of the migrant diet have been used to emphasize the alien and disagreeable aspects of the incomer's presence. Beer, now the epitome of Englishness, was once considered an alien drink imported by unpopular strangers. In the sixteenth century the Dutch brewers were accused of selling poisonous beer (Luu 2002: 107). Drink as a xenophobic tool was used again during the nineteenth century, this time by the English press against Irish immigrants. The some what unjust image of the drunken, violent 'Paddy' was one promoted by anti- Catholic newspapers including the Bristol Times, though it has been suggested that the paper was more concerned about the threat of religion, in this instance Catholicism, than the menace of ethnic Irish (Davis 1989:120-21)!3

It was not only the Dutch in the sixteenth century who were portrayed as a threat to the health of the nation. During the 1880s and 1890s, Italian 'Penny ice cream' m en were repeatedly accused of endangering the lives of the indigenous population by producing poisonous ice cream in 'monstrously filthy, foul and overcrowded conditions' (Sponza 2002: 97). Some xenophobes went so far as to suggest that the ice cream vendors were purposefully intent on poisoning young children and thus endangering the future of the British Empire. In 1898, in an article published following the death of a child in London, which was attributed to the effects of ice cream, the Daily Telegraph referred to the Italians as 'a horde of unwashed, illiterate, semi-barbarous foreigners, who treat the lives of British children as if we were as valueless as their own' (Sponza 2002: 97). The piece appeared at a time w hen concern over the deleterious effects of the immigrant presence was running very high. After three years, action was taken and controls introduced to monitor the conditions under which ice cream was made and sold.

It was not only the threat to the health of the nation that allied food and xenophobia. Verbal attack resulting from the unpleasant odour of the alien diet is one that can be traced through from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first century. In the eighteenth century food and diet were used to identify the differences between foreigness and Englishness, for 'while gaunt foreigners ate roots and herbs (the French), frogs and butter (the Dutch) oats and haggis (the Scots), robust Englishmen feasted on roast b e e f (Statt 1995: 189). It was the Huguenot diet that came in for most criticism at this time. Poverty required that the poorest members of that community exist on a diet of cabbage and root vegetables, meat being a rare luxury. The effect of this pattern of consumption was to make consumer and adjacent open drains more than usually foul-smelling, a condition from which the Calvinist refu gees earned the title, 'the very offal of the earth' (Smith 1939: 2). Root vegeta bles featured again in the denigrating remarks directed at the Irish in England in the years just before the outbreak of World War II. These migrants 'were ridi culed for their Sunday habit of boiling cabbage, pork ribs and "murphies"14 all in one iron pan, then letting the mess serve for every meal far into the follow ing week' (Fitzpatrick 1989:120). The malodorous Jewish practice of frying fish the day before the Sabbath was one highlighted by English trade unionists in the 1890s, during the time w hen anti-alienism and demands for controls on alien entry were at their height. At the Trade Union Congress Conference of 1895, one delegate, a Mr Newcombe, raised the issue of the 'importation of the Jews and their well known penchant for fried fish' (Anon. 1895). It was at this conference that a resolution was finally approved, demanding controls on pauper alien immigration.15 Some 70 years on it was the smell of curry that armed racists in East London, the midlands and the north of England. The

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stench of curry being prepared by immigrants from the Indian sub-continent was a constant in the invectives that formed part of the opposition to the locating of 'paki'16 immigrants on all white local government housing estates (Foreman 1989: 10). It should be noted that this did not prevent members of the receiving society either going out for, or 'taking-away7, a curry - albeit one cooked specifically for British palates.

More recently, the ubiquity of Polish delicatessens, or polski sklep, in cities and towns throughout Britain - one website lists more than 305 around the country - has fuelled rising discontent about the way large-scale migration from Eastern Europe, following the accessions to the EU in 2004 and 2008,17 is impacting on the very nature of 'Britishness'.

Over the centuries xenophobes and racists have drawn on the negative aspects - as they perceive them - of immigrant food. In most cases the reaction has been at street level, from those who live in proximity to the outsiders. However, this has not always been the case. In 1939 the ultra-conservative Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals published the state ment, 'If Jews ended the practice of ritual slaughter then relations with other Britons would improve' (Kushner 1989: 17). In their eyes food was the major cause of the lack of a good relationship between the Jewish immigrants and the receiving society.

16. Paki w a s t h e p e jo ra tiv e n a m e g iv e n t o th e im m ig r a n ts fr o m E ast P a k is ta n ( w h ic h in 1971 b e c a m e B ang la desh ). I t w a s in 1969 t h a t th e p h r a s e ‘ p a k i b a s h in g ’ w a s f ir s t use d to d e s c rib e v io le n t ra c is t a tta c k s o n P a k is ta n i im m ig r a n ts in L o n d o n ’s E ast End.

17. T h e 2004 E astern E u ro p e a n a c ce ssio n c o u n tr ie s w e re : Czech R e p u b lic , E sto n ia , H u n g a ry , L a tvia , L ith u a n ia , P o la n d , S lo v a k ia a n d S lovenia . In 2007 R o m a n ia a n d B u lg a r ia w e re a d m itte d .

CONCLUSION At the time of writing (midway through the second decade of the twenty- first century), the shopping aisles of nearly every food outlet in the United Kingdom advertise the presence of the most recent newcomers to the United Kingdom's immigrant kaleidoscope. O n the 'Foods of the World' shelves of the supermarkets, close by the Thai green curry sauce, Teriyaki marinade, tacos and burritos, as well as in the numerous Polish delicatessens that have sprung up from Land's End to John O'Groats, perogi/dumplings, plazeklcoffee cake and zupa kartoflanalpotato soup, are to be found. Once again, as in centuries past, if we want to learn more about the immigrant presence we need to identify and locate immigrant food. Yet the role played by food in the migrant experience is far more than foreign words on a supermarket shelf. Food denotes migrant identity, links with home, religion and health, as well as migrant economic activity and mobility. It is only when we deconstruct the adage 'tell me w hat you eat and I will tell you w ho you are' that we can really begin to comprehend the migrant experience.

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(ed.), Food in the Migrant Experience, Aldershot Ashgate, pp. 172-95. Connor, H. et al. (2003), 'Nutritional advice for people with diabetes', Diabetic

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SUGGESTED CITATION

Kershen, A. J. (2014), 'Food in the British immigrant experience', Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture 5: 2+3, pp. 201-211, doi: 10.1386/ cjmc.5.2-3.201_l

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Dr Anne J. Kershen was a Barnet Shine Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics (now the School of Politics and International Studies) at Q ueen Mary University of London from 1990 until her retirement in 2010.

Food in th e B ritis h im m ig r a n t e x p e r ie n c e

She is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Migration at QMUL and an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies at UCL. In 1995 she founded the Centre for the Study of Migration at QMUL and became its Director, a position she held until 2010. She has published widely, appeared on television and radio, and acted as a consultant to the media on migration in London. Her recent publications include, T here was a Priest, a rabbi and an imam ...: Religious continuity and discontinuity in East London, Material Religion (2013); 'Married Jewish and Muslim w om en don't work', Home Cultures (2011), 'Synagogues and mosques, bagels and curries', Jewish Culture and History (2010); Strangers, Aliens and Asians: Huguenots, Jews and Bangladeshis in Spitalfields 1660-2000 (2005, Routledge). She is the Series Editor for the Ashgate series 'Studies in Migration and Diaspora', and is currently editing, and contributing to, London the Promised Land Revisited: The Changing Face of the London Migrant Landscape in the early 21st Century, which is due for publication in late summer 2015.

Contact: School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London, London, El 4NS, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Anne J. Kershen has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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