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ABSTRACT
Culture, acquired taste and past experiences, shape immigrants’ food preferences and acculturation inclination. As people migrate from Africa, South Asia and China to Canada, Toronto’s food landscape has been transformed. This migration pattern has led to a situation where unfortunately some immigrants have become food insecure, because their preferred foods have not been available as they have become increasingly dependent on inexpensive, lower nutritional foods that are available through food banks and mainstream grocery stores. This situation is particularly common for relatively deprived, refugee path immigrants (RPI). There is therefore a need for policies that will strengthen the value chain of culturally appropriate, quality foods which enhance their food sovereignty. This paper presents the outcome of our fieldwork (2015–2016) examining the preferences and economic characteristics of Somalis in the GTA. Data collection involved direct observation, participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and structured questionnaires. Our results indicate that Somalis integrate best when they are involved, as active stakeholders, in the food value chain and are given the opportunity to explore their entrepreneurial abilities connected to their culturally preferred value chains.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding this research. We also appreciate the hard efforts of our research assistants, Morgan Sage, Rana Telfah, Olaitan Ogunnote, Samuel Dent, Iliam Ismail, Gasira Abdul Karim, Florenz Ongkinco, Shawn Filson and Shay Warner.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Many have criticized Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers’ Program for being excessively exploitative (or superexploitive, Filson and Adekunle Citation2017) of the large pool of seasonal workers imported to work mainly in the agricultural sector (Akbari and MacDonald Citation2014). Though minor remediation has occurred, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program (SAWP) has been criticized for workers’ confined living conditions conducive of spreading COVID-19, the inability of workers to apply for permit status and the dependence of the workers on one employer only among other issues (see for e.g. Weiler and McLaughlin Citation2019).
2. Areas where there are “physical and economic barriers to accessing healthy food” (Shaw Citation2006).
3. We are aware of the fairly widespread negative perception of Somalis which we think is mainly due to media misrepresentation (Yusuf Citation2014; Yimer and Amour Citation2020). These impressions notwithstanding, Somalis were qualified to be refugee claimants in Canada because of the insurgency and war in their country. Furthermore, some are already registered in third countries like Kenya with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and were resettled in Canada based on their vulnerability.
4. Food sovereignty is the ability of people to own and control their food systems including promoting their culturally appropriate foods (Patel Citation2009; Wittman and Desmarais Citation2012; Adekunle Citation2016; Adekunle and Filson Citation2020) while food security is access to food that may not necessarily be sustainable or desirable.
5. They try and often do completely avoid alcohol. The few who drink, tending not to do so openly, avoid it during the Ramadan period.
6. Mostly from sorghum, maize, and or any other cereals.
7. Also spelt as anjero, canjeero, canjeera, and laxox. Pronunciation varies among regions.
8. *All the models were adequate according to Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and the Bartlett’s test of sphericity was also significant. Principal components analysis was used for the extraction method. The rotation method employed varimax with Kaiser normalization. The figures in bold are the items that load heavily on the underlying components/factors.
9. Non-Somalis have also benefited from this development. For example, a significant number of people from the Middle East, other African countries, and European descents Canadians eat at Xawaash and purchase goat meat from Salama Hut butcher and Seif (field survey, 2015–2016).
10. Home can be Somalia, Kenya (Garissa), Ethiopia (Ogaden region), or Djibouti. All these countries have indigenous Somalis.
11. For a comparative assessment of how social class and ethnicity affect Canadians’ perception of immigration and native people’s rights see Filson (Citation1983).
12. As income increases the amount spent on Somali foods decreases. The more well-off respondents spent a lower relative amount on Somali food even if they spent more on it.
13. Unlike the correlation the regression result is required to prove causality.
14. We are not sure whether this is an artifact of culture or religion, both or neither. For instance, in most English Canadian homes, the women do most of the grocery shopping whereas there are mostly men in Kano, Nigeria food markets. Of course, in southern, more Christian Nigeria, the traders and shoppers are mostly women. We need to explore this interesting discovery further.
15. Seif was selected after extensive consultation with Somalis in the GTA.
16. Based on the average per hour computed from data collected from our personal visits and estimate from the manager.
17. The store is opened 10 hrs/day for 30 days in month = 300 hours.
18. This is an average from our focus groups, interviews and survey.
19. This is from the analysis of the responses of 253 Somalis selected based on probability sampling technique in the GTA.
20. We assume, based on our interactions with Somalis that around 20% of the Somalis in the GTA go to Seif on average 1.5 times per month.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Bamidele Adekunle
Bamidele Adekunle, PhD is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, and teaches at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. He is currently the lead of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant examining the asymmetric information in the halal market. He has published in journals such as International Small Business Journal, Appetite, International Journal of Consumer Studies, and Food Ethics among others. He co-published a book Eat Local, Taste Global: How Ethnocultural Food Reaches our Tables with Glen Filson – by Wilfred Laurier University (WLU) Press.
Glen Filson
Glen Filson, PhD is Professor Emeritus, College of Agriculture, University of Guelph. His research has dealt with the political economy of adult education and food sovereignty, farming systems research, comparative agricultural extension systems, farmers’ environmental best management practices, the identification of demand for ethnocultural vegetables, and how best to promote their local production. His most recent book is with Bamidele Adekunle, Eat Local, Taste Global: How Ethnocultural Food Reaches our Tables Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press (https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/E/Eat-Local-Taste-Global).
Warsame Warsame
Warsame Warsame is an international civil servant who worked as a refugee resettlement officer for the UN migration agency (IOM) in the Middle East and North Africa. He is now a Senior Program Officer for the Student Refugee Program of the World University Service of Canada. His decade-long service in global refugee protection began at Toronto Pearson International Airport, Canada’s main refugee and migrant Port of Entry where he served as a Refugee Assistance Program (RAP) coordinator. Warsame holds a Master of Science in Capacity Development and Extension from the University of Guelph, and Advanced Certificate in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from York University.