Embodied geographies of food, belonging and hope in multicultural Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This article focuses on embodied geographies of food, belonging and hope for a group of migrant women in the small city of Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand. We explore the complex nature of multiculturalism as it is produced via place and food-sharing. Interviews and cooking sessions with 11 migrant women in Hamilton, each from a different country, prompted a range of emotions highlighting the numerous ways in which migrant women feel that they belong, or do not belong, to their ‘old home’, and their ‘new home’. Furthermore, the sharing of food and feelings helps establish affective ties between women migrants – across ethnic differences – and to the place of Hamilton. These hopeful intercultural encounters – discussed and digested in kitchens – are moments of reciprocity and mutual recognition between ethnically and culturally ‘different’ women. This account provides a means of not only highlighting the difficulties that migrant women face, but also the possibilities of multicultural place sharing.