Exploring immigrants’ experiences through cultural practices and homemaking: the case of Dominican immigrants’ food practices

ABSTRACT

Moving away from questions about immigrants’ integration in various domains of the receiving society, this study focuses on their practices and feelings. More specifically, it provides insights in the role of cultural practices from the country of origin in creating home post-migration. By exploring food practices of Dominican immigrants in the Netherlands this ethnographic study shows how these practices contribute to their homemaking. The analysis focuses on the differentiated nature of homemaking. Firstly, the findings show that there is differentiation in familiarity. Secondly, homemaking does not only involve the re-creation of practices from the country of origin. There is differentiation in the meaning of food and whether it contributes to homemaking in the receiving society. The research shows how attention for feelings of home and cultural practices is an entry point to know about immigrants’ attachments to both the country of origin and the receiving society and their settlement experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrant experiences
• immigrant homemaking
• home feeling
• cultural practices
• food practices
• Dominican immigrants

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Dominicans who shared their time and experiences with me, making this study possible. Without their love and warmth, doing fieldwork would not have been so much fun.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

The research was conducted with approval from the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam. All respondents were informed about the purposes of this research and how their responses would be used and stored. All respondents have been anonymised and gave verbal consent to be interviewed for the purposes of this research.

Notes

1 This article is based on Chapter 6 of the author's PhD thesis “Dominican flavours in a new context. Homemaking and food practices of Dominican immigrants”.