WP0 coordinates the research activities among the research partners, ensuring the overall project progress, while aiming at flexibility, a dynamic relationship between the project members, and to facilitate communication both within the project and outward to the wider society.

WP1 will develop a new theoretical framework for integration through foodscapes, keeping in mind contemporary ecological challenges, theories of integration, agency and migrant entrepreneurship.
Foodscapes are territories that start and end with “ideas of food” as they situate the lives of individuals, social groups, and cultures. As such, foodscapes map everyday life; they include where someone does groceries, eating habits expressing family relations and marking of days, seasons and years (Dolphijn 2004). However, foodscapes also come with very abstract concepts; within them, there is always a politics going on, a sociology, an economy, and an ecology. Indeed, the (social) imaginary plays a crucial role in establishing these foodscapes.

Our theoretical dynamic approach called “negotiating foodscapes” aims at considering how spaces and people mutually constitute each other through the lens of food. Reciprocal interactions between migrants and host societies is a pillar of the FOOD2GATHER project.

Our conceptualisation of foodscape not only constitutes the main theoretical perspective, but it is also operational tool as well as an open concept to forge a powerful link between case studies. To make sure that our efforts do not strand in a series of relativist descriptions of what happens in the various member states, theories are used in order to surface the resonances between, and among, the various analyses, transforming all our efforts into the European project that it aims to be.

WP2 aims at identifying how the relation between food and public spaces has been modelled at both political, empirical and discursive levels. This work package consists of three parts.

The first part aims at providing some general background information about migration in different national contexts. What is the story of migration in each of the country participating to the project? How is the flow of refugees, asylum seekers migrants, particularly in the last ten years?

The second part looks at formal and non-formal regulation that concerns the issue of food and migration in public food spaces; from regulation about food in reception centers or schools, to permission to start food based activities as catering. We are also concerned about assistance programs existing at national or local level and the actors involved in these programs. The idea is to develop a contextual overview of what is done in each country to aid or integrate refugees through food.

Finally we will conduct a comparative Media discourse analysis of relevant national (or local) debates related to food and integration in public foodspaces. In doing so, we aim at showing how various stakeholders adress potential controversies that arise in european public spaces, such as the halal slaughter issue or the status of members of the civil society illegaly providing food to migrants. What role do the medias play in such debates and what could the analysis of our neighbours’ practices teach us?  These are som of the questions we will ty to answer.

WP3 consists of all the fieldwork of the project and its methodological preparations. It unfolds in ten complementary case studies that investigate whether and how food serves as a tool for social integration in six European countries. The methods used are ethnographic in nature and adapted to the project’s research environment, which is the public space. They comprise participant observation in different settings (cooking workshops, food-related events and gatherings, schools, refugee camps, among others), flexibly guided interviews, life-stories or narrative interviews and the production of audiovisual content (photography and video) in collaboration with field consultants and partners. Recorded and transcribed data, together with the audio visual content, serve both as a ground for empirical analysis and as raw material for a range of dissemination activities, which include exhibitions, podcasts, workshops and courses at the university level.

The fourth work package of FOOD2GATHER combines both experiment and action research, in a part called: Experimental and analytical approaches – Pilot projects integration of migrants through foodscapes. Directly building on the previous work packages, especially fieldwork in WP3, this work package aims at implementing concrete integration of research activities in civil society.

The first phase consists of organizing a public dialogic discussion, called hybrid forum based on a central controversy that emerged from the fieldwork. Each country will have its own hybrid forum on a given subject in a chosen local area. Hybrid forum 2.0 is a methodology developed in a previous EU H2020 project and inspired by “acting in an uncertain world” a book published by Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe in 2001. The public dialogues through hybrid forums ensure a democratic approach including many different actors by sharing of visions and goals related to the project as well as co-creation of knowledge from an early stage.

After hybrid forum and together with partners and people who have participated in the HF 2.0, each research team will choose a pilot project, to be developed together with actors in the field and associative partners. Pilots are not decided from before as we wish to a findings to needs, but they can be as varied as food festival, establishment or support of food truck, exhibition, theatre play, a radio channel or other collaborative activities. The aim is to stimulate and make easier integration of migrants through foodscapes in the long term.

This second phase will be instantly followed by the third step, which is the evaluation of the pilot project, to measure direct and indirect impacts related to social integration – including societal, cultural and environmental impact.

More info here about Hybrid forum 2.0 – Article in open acces.