A Taste of Home: Gastronomic Identity, Adaptation, and Nostalgia among East African migrants in Sweden

Sammanfattning: “The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love, and death.” – Forster, E.M., 1927, Aspects of the Novel.We might all have something to say about love, but we are certain about food.The thesis aims to develop a perspective on food, its role, and traditions as possible a tool of identification among first and second generation East-African migrants in Sweden, in the area of Falun. Particularly, I focused on the concept of gastronomic identity and the relation between food and nostalgia. The intention is to explore whether a gastronomic identity can be identified, and the importance of nostalgia by answering the following questions:1. How do the people interviewed refer to their gastronomic identity? How is it related to their country of origin, to Sweden, or a hybridization of the two?2. How do first and second generation of immigrants adapt their food traditions in the local context?3. What is the role of food, its tradition, and how is it related to the feeling of nostalgia for these people?In order to answer to these questions, I made use of an extensive academic literature research on food and gastronomic identity on both the historical and anthropological perspective and variety of multimedia materials (such as blogs, YouTube videos). I have also conducted semi-structured interviews with East African immigrants in Falun. Through the use of both literature and, above all, the interviews, I concluded that gastronomic identity takes on a much more personal and individual meaning than nationalistic or ethnic identity, and almost always emerges as a transculturalization of the two countries: Sweden and the country of origin. In the responses of the interviewed migrants from East Africa, it also emerges that food is an element to define our identity as individuals and it is linked to memory and influenced by the nostalgia of home. Therefore, according to the respondents, anywhere one may be, when feeling nostalgia, one will be looking for a taste of home, whatever and wherever it is.