Migration and the Americas Food as Infrastructure: Homemaking Practices Among (Transit) Migrants Across the Americas
- Donnerstag, 3. Juli 2025, 18:15 Uhr
- HCA Atrium
- Yaatsil Guevara González
This presentation explores how food operates as a form of infrastructure in the everyday lives of (transit) migrants navigating displacement across the Americas. Moving beyond symbolic interpretations, I examine food as a material and affective medium through which migrants create temporary forms of stability, belonging, and care in conditions of uncertainty. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Mexico and Costa Rica—including shelters, (temporary) camps, hotels, and informal ‘kitchens’—I show how practices such as cooking, sharing meals, and cultivating food-related knowledge function as homemaking strategies. These acts not only sustain life but also forge networks of support and resistance amid prolonged waiting and uncertainty. By approaching food as infrastructure, I foreground its capacity to enable relationality, agency, and situated forms of care within fragmented geographies of mobility. The presentation contributes to current debates in migration and infrastructure studies, emphasizing the entanglements of care, mobility, and materiality in transit contexts.

Adresse
HCA Atrium
Veranstaltungstyp
Veranstaltungsreihe
Alle Termine der Veranstaltung 'Migrations and the Americas'
Migrationsbewegungen erweisen sich in vielen Weltregionen als eine besondere globale Herausforderung des 21. Jahrhunderts. Das HCA wendet sich diesem Thema zusammen mit dem Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies und dem Institut für Geografie mit der Vortragsreihe „Migration and the Americas“ zu, mit besonderem Fokus auf die USA und Lateinamerika.
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Yaatsil Guevara GonzálezProf. Dr. Ulrike Gerhard