Paving over taquerias to put up condos: constructing urban imaginaries of migrant foodscapes via digital food narratives

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore the social construction of place through a close analysis of the language used in online reviews to describe migrant-owned or -serving restaurants and their neighborhoods in Charlotte, NC. Through analysis of more than 2,000 online reviews of 16 restaurants across multiple platforms, we found that online restaurant reviews are key sites in which discourse about particular social groups and spaces is brought forth. In particular, through racialized narratives that rely on descriptions of lack, depictions of danger, and stereotypes, urban imaginaries are constructed that enable remaking Latin American neighborhoods. We further argue that reproducing such urban imaginaries serves to devalue migrant neighborhoods through presenting them as places that do not match modern city aspirations. This paper contributes to literature in food studies, urban geography, and rhetoric by examining the ways that digital food grammars pave the way for remaking migrant neighborhoods in emerging migrant gateway cities.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital food grammars
• migrant neighborhoods
• social construction of place
• rhetoric
• Charlotte

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express their thanks to Jeffrey Pilcher for providing helpful feedback as this article developed. We also appreciate receiving constructive feedback from two anonymous reviewers and the editor.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Our use of the term discourse is inspired by Johnston and Baumann’s (2015) explanation of discourse as “an institutionalized system of knowledge … that organizes populations, and shapes the parameters of what thoughts are popular and even possible” (p. 37).

2. We rely on understandings of cosmopolitan as the valuing of a shared global humanity, expressed through carrying out global dispositions at a local level and seeking unfamiliar cultural encounters (DeVerteuil, Yun, and Choi 2019; Ley 2004; Valentine 2008). One way that such cosmopolitanisms are made visible is the everyday cultural consumption decisions of those with enough resources to use, for example, food habits as a means of distinction. Cappeliez and Johnston (2013) point out that cosmopolitan eaters are not a homogenous group, but that often cosmopolitan foods are understood as new, authentic, and/or exotic (see also Johnston and Baumann 2010).

3. Lipsitz (2007, 12) explains that “the lived experience of race has a spatial dimension, and the lived experience of space has a racial dimension.” In other words, different races are segregated in particular spaces while the racial makeup of neighborhoods has historically determined what resources residents have access to (mortgages, grocery stores, education, etc). For him, these material effects are linked to racialized spatial imaginaries in which Whiteness is associated with privilege and structured neighborhood advantages, while Blackness is associated with long histories of systematic discrimination that lead residents to rely more heavily on public services and mutual aid. Rankin and McLean (2015) further identify how these racialized spatial imaginaries are reproduced in processes of neighborhood branding that erase racialized people from redevelopment plans while also stigmatizing the places created by marginalized groups.

4. We treat reviews as direct quotes and have not edited them for grammar.