‘Multicultural lunches’: sharing food in post-Brexit south coast of England

ABSTRACT

Food can be considered a substance that brings people together through its material and sensuous qualities, through affecting shared memories of people and place, and through traditions of hospitality. It is a human necessity with multiple levels of communal understanding, and conviviality. Currently, much of the UK faces the fragmentation of communities based on closely divided political views. In this case, conflicting feelings related to Brexit, migration and refugees. This paper offers a qualitative analysis of a series of ‘multicultural lunches’ – named and organized by a local equality advocacy charity and partner volunteer organizations. The multicultural lunches took place in 2017. Drawing from 13 semi-structured interviews and 6 participant observations we provide detailed discussion that links food with leisure and community. Analysis of the findings illustrates the nature of local response to broader societal fragmentation and conflict, and offers discussion of the value of food to community development.

KEYWORDS:

• Food
• sharing
• community
• migration
• refugees
• leisure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jayne Caudwell is Associate Professor, Head of Research and Head of the research Centre for Events, Leisure, Society and Culture (CELSC) in the Department of Events and Leisure at Bournemouth University, UK. Her research interests are concerned with leisure and sport cultures, feminist theories, theories of sexualities and qualitative research methodologies.

Dr Jaeyeon Choe is a senior academic at Bournemouth University. Her research areas are spiritual/religious tourism and leisure, migrant and refugee well-being and sustainable community development.

Janet E. Dickinson is a Professor at Bournemouth University where her research focuses on mobility, communities and sustainable travel.

Natalia Lavrushkina is a research assistant at Bournemouth University. Her work has explored cooperativeness and collaborative interaction and has involved work with refuges and migrant communities.

Rosie Littlejohns graduated from Bournemouth University with a first-class honours degree in Leisure and Events Marketing. Her final year dissertation analysed active leisure engagement and social support practices.

Notes

1 In this paper we focus on the 3 interviews with lunch participants. We draw from the 10 interviews with members of local organisations to establish the general context in terms of provision and issues surrounding leisure provision more broadly.

2 The 10 interviews contribute to a larger research project of which this paper is one element.