Eating transnationally : Mexican migrant workers in Alaska

This thesis is about how transnational lives and identities are lived out as much through what people eat -or say they eatas thr.ough other global cultural flows.This is what I call "eating transnationally"meals that connect places and the people in them or.foods that depend on interconnectedness and mobility across space.Based on multi-sited fieldwork with Mexican migrant workers and their families in Anchorage, Alaska and Acuitzio deì Canje, Michoacán, i investigate the food-related connections and interconnections between Alaska and Mexico and the complexity, irony and hybridization that results from the movement ofpeople and foods.As well, I explore how eating, shopping for, and talking about certain foods (notably chile) are identity performances.This study advocates in-depth study of the relationship between food and identity, and fìnds that the exploration of food and eating in the lives of transnational Mexican workers in Alaska provide considerable insight into conceptualizations of Mexican people and of places like Acuitzio del Canje and Anchorage in a globalized world.4 borders and boundaries in cookbooks, as embodied knowledge, and in memories and imaginings.Finally, new food-related experiences in Alaska are important.I look for disjunctures or disconnections (or some might say hybrids or travelling culture).I also look at food and eating as performance to explore out how food serves as a marker and a material reality oftransnational identity.In this way, I can understand how food connects places and the people in them and what place that food has in the lives of my research participants and in their identities as Mexicans in Alaska.It is also significant that many of my research participants in Alaska work, or have worked, in restaurants, and specifically in Mexican restaurants.That there are many Mexican restaurants in Anchorage, and in other parts of Alaska is important.ln fact, the town of Banow has the northernmost Mexican restaurant in the world (Bibbs 2006:89).what is especially important and interesting is that the food served in these restaurants is altered to fit American tastes.This raises questions about the kinds of food-related boundaries that arise between notions of "us" and "them", and about the creation and maintenance of difference, something discussed in both Chapter 6, ',Halibut Tacos and Blueberry Atole',, and Chaptel 7, "We Put Chile on Everything".Therefore, my project is not just about food, it is about how globalization and migration becomes a parl ofpeople's lives and identities, right down to the very food that they eat.In my mind, globalization means greater connection and interconnection as well as kinds of disjunctures and disconnects, even unexpected situations, things that do not seem to go together, or culture that becomes detenitorialized from place and re-inscribed someplace else.Studying food emphasizes how global processes become part of daily lives and my study will suggest how food is a marker and a material reality of globalization as a condition and a process.For transnational subjects, food and food practices become distinctive markers of cultural continuity and difference as well as of hybridity and assimilation.This makes food a crucial site for contestations and negotiations of gender, community, and kinship (Mankekar 2005).Thus, food is an important topic of study for understandings of the identity of transnational workers.By looking at the food-related connections between homes, stores, and restaurants of transnational migrant workers in Alaskamany of whom are from the same to\.vn,Acuitzio del Canje -I hope to gain an und.rrtunding olf transnational identity, with food as a marker and concrete reality of that identity.such connections are part of the global flow of food culture as foodscapes or "culinascapes,' (Bestor I 999:204, following Appadurai 1996), a concept that is discussed in greater detail in chapter 2, "Food for Thought".These foodscape connections across space and time help to constitute the identity and "imagined worlds" (Appadurai 1996) of transnational workers in Alaska.Foodscapes connect places and the people in them and they are also something uneven and creative.In this thesis, I show the two places and the people central to this study are connected, while also looking at how foodways change and how new ways of being Mexican are created.The methodology for this project, further discussed in Chapter 3,,,Recipe for.Ethnography", was ethnographic, with particular emphasis placed on participant observation and serni-structured interviews.To compliment my interest and theoretical orientation in transnationalism and the connections and spaces between places, my methodology was multi-sited, with ethnographic research conducted in both the origin and destination of migration of the migrant workers and their families who are central to my study.As such, I spent time in both Anchorage, Alaska and in Acuitzio del canje, Michoacán, putting myself wherever food and Mexicanness met, or might meet, and asking questions about food in the lives of migrant workers as well as for those who stay in place.This project came about directly as a result of a paper about sushi wr.itten for a third-year globalization seminar at the univer.sity of Manitoba.prior to that I had an interest in both Latin America and the place offood in contemporary society, but had not focused in any meaningful way on the literature dealing with how food can be an important symbol and useful way to look at globalization and the circulation of things and ideas.My advisor, Dr. Raymond wiest, was just beginning a multi-year and multi- sited project genelally concerned with the "theoretical and practical understandings ofthe impacts of globalizing forces" (wiest 2002:10), and the examination of how ,,mobile livelihoods affect social relations among workers and their sense of identity, their social and cultural positioning, their sense of community, and their sense of empowerment', 6 (2002:10).His project was designed to include research in Acuitzio del canje as well as in the sites of migration of individuals from that town, including california, Alaska, and Chicago.In 2003, I became a part of that project and, having an interest in going to Alaska, designed my project around the food-related connections between Anchor.age and Acuitzio del canje.Knowing ahead of time that food was travelling from Acuitzio to Alaska, and sometimes in large amounts (wiest, personal communication 2004), I began to develop a project that followed the people and the food and food-related connections from Anchorage to Acuitzio in an effort to understand the transnational migrant experience as related to food, and what that might have to say about identity. Significance of the topicWhile much research is currently being done on the place of food in contemporary society, more research needs to be done in order to understand the place of lood in the lives of people around the globe.Food is a part of everyone's lives by necessity, and is something that is generally taken for granted but sometimes invested with great symbolism and importance.Thus, food and eating deserve academic attention.Food, cooking, and eating are deeply cultural, yet also very creative and adaptable.with legards to transnational migration, food and ideas about food are also things that literally travel between two places, often alongside those who are migrating, in suitcases or cany- on bags.Food is connected to place, yet becomes dislodged as it moves alongside migrants ol other mobile groups.This dislodging or deterritorialization (Appadurai 1996) fulfils growing cosmopolitan desires to eat the world without leaving home, ol it brings bananas to canada and ginger to Mexico.Theoretically, this means that one way to look at globalization and its impact on the individual is to look at food.Methodologically, it means looking at food ethnographically, focusing on recipes, ingredients, tastes, rnemories, performances, and other foods and food-related things and ideas.A focus on food also privileges the kind of information generally held by or associated with women, particularly in a society like Mexico where women are associated with food and cooking.This is significant because, in Mexico, both historically and in the present day, men are much more likely to nigrate across inte¡national borders to find work (wiest 1973, 2002;Bjerén 1997).women do migrate Overview of the thesis Each chapter begins with a recipe, something that keeps the focus on food.These recipes were collected while doing research in both Anchorage and Acuitzio.In spending time with my research participants, cooking, eating, and talking about food, many recipes were shared with me.As I discuss further in Chapfer 7,,,lVe Put Chile on Everything,', recipes are not just recipes, they show something about the person who is sharing them.since I collected and included some recipes and not others, these recipes also say something about me.For me, by writing, preparing, and eating each dish that a recipe is provided for, I know that certain places, times, and persons from my time in Anchorage and Mexico will be remembered.Further, each recipe was chosen to represent something about each chapter, however basic.For some chapters, I provide recipes that relate directly to the subject ofthe chapter.For other chapters, the recipe roughly corresponds to the progression of the thesis as a rneal (e.g., ice cream for 'dessert' in the conclusion).Other recipes are for dishes that are mentioned tlu.oughout the thesis.The thesis as a whole is made up of a combination of creative non-fiction stories, translated interview excerpts, and fieldnote excerpts alongside analysis and anthropological discussion.Organizationally, the thesis reflects my own growing sensitization to the complexity of issues surrounding food and identity.Each chapter peels away another layer of the cebolla, or onion, as

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