In Foods for Connection, youth researchers in the Migrant Youth Lifeworlds Project are theorizing the significance of family recipes for making relationship, making meaning, and making place. This a community publication of a participatory analysis project nearly 10 years in the making. In writing this foreword, I reflect on the many collaborations engaged over the Migrant Lifeworlds Project, including with migrant youth in the Mid-Hudson Valley, in New York, staff at the Mid-Hudson Migrant Youth Education Program, migrant youth co-researchers and participatory photographers in a small town in the Hudson Valley, graduate students in the Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab, and migrant youth researchers in Toronto, Ontario. To create this project, in 2021-22, migrant youth in Toronto read and engaged the transcripts of interviews and participatory research sessions with migrant youth in the Hudson Valley, conducted between 2016-18. Themes of the 2016-18 study included the impact of policies (like DACA) that defer the threat of deportation in migrant youths’ secondary and post-secondary school and work decisions and migrant youths’ relationships to the Hudson Valley as a place. The Toronto-based team of youth researchers (who are the authors of this cookbook) analyzed transcripts of dozens of interviews, focus groups, and participatory research sessions, but also considered how the themes of the Migrant Youth Lifeworlds Project apply to their own lives.

What I learn from the authors of this cookbook is to consider how recipes can transport us to a time and a place. A recipe is a form of writing that maybe everyone thinks they know. But to follow a recipe written down for us by a loved one, especially in their handwriting, is to be embraced by them, and their thoughts for a future version of us who is away from them, preparing this food. A recipe is a future-affirming piece of writing, one that knows that there will be a time in the future that you will want to prepare this food. It is also a form of writing that remembers the relations and the conditions of the past. We make a recipe as a time machine that brings the past into the future. We make a recipe as a transporter to bring one place to another. We hope that these recipes can convey the sense of connection with which they are imbued. May you make them on the last night in town, on your first night in a new apartment, on the anniversary of your arrival, on a day you are feeling homesick, at a time when you need comfort, at a time when you can offer comfort to someone else.

Congratulations to the authors, Ihsan, Cham, Maggie, Jack, Tayseer, Eileen, Yasmin, and Abdelrahman. Many thanks to Razan, Kai, Milen, Megan, Jade, Tiffany and Fernanda. Qagaasaakuq’ to the William T Grant Foundation Scholars Program, which has been a key ingredient to the trajectory of the Migrant Youth Lifeworlds Project, in all of its iterations.

Warmly and with gratitude,

Eve Tuck

OISE, University of Toronto

Director, Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab

We want our cookbook to share ideas about how we can relate to or connect with other people. One way that we can relate to each other is by showing care through food. Food can bring people together. It is a vehicle for expressing our care for one another. Whatever the food is, you can show love by making it, eating it, or sharing it.

We have written recipes for our traditional foods in this cookbook. We refer to traditional food as a way to respect difference and to respect the idea that people are coming from different places.

We think that when you read a recipe written by another person and use it to prepare your food, the person who wrote the recipe feels listened to and appreciated.

There is a story behind every meal and when a person uses your recipe, you feel like you are able to talk to that person. You feel like you are able to share your history and feelings through the recipe and that makes you feel listened to. You feel like your words have reached someone.

When someone takes the time and puts in the effort to cook food that is special to you, it can make you feel heard and accepted. Meals are intimate, so it makes you feel like you wrote something special if someone is willing to share your recipe or traditional food with people in their circle. Please enjoy our recipes and give them a try with people you care about.

For the past six months, we, the Migrant Life Worlds Project at the Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab, have engaged in meaningful and thoughtful conversations around our own migrant journeys. This project has allowed us, as migrant youth, to actively participate in the research process to investigate and understand how immigration policies can influence other migrant youths' decisions of what to do after high school. With this Zine, we hope to share and celebrate the cherished relationships we have formed and the connections we have made with our own cultural heritage, especially through the expression of food and family recipes.

Find out more about this research: https://www.tkarontocirclelab.com/migrant-youth-lifeworlds

In sharing and reflecting upon our own experiences, we highlight acceptance, belonging, community as noteworthy themes that have emerged in our discussions. We believe that food, as a powerful and shared cultural experience, can bring about this sense of togetherness for everyone, no matter where we are and what we are facing in the world. We hope that you, as readers, can relate to the feeling of comfort that food can bring and thus find this resource valuable in a way that is unique and true to you.

Abdelrahman

I love adventure and making new friends. I joined this project because I wanted make new friends and learn from them in this project.

Cham

I am an IT professional, immigrant, and I live in Toronto. I joined this project because I wanted to understand other immigrants' lives and their way of life here in Canada.

Eileen

Grew up in Toronto, born in China, excited for my high school graduation! I joined this project because I was drawn to aspects of this project that I felt mirrored my own life — being a migrant youth with worries and uncertainties about life after graduating from high school.

Ihsan

I am a cool girl 😎 with cool sunglasses😎😎

I joined this project because I loved the discussions we had and the new things I learned with the project.

Jack

I am a dancer. I like having fun. I am a hardworking and enthusiastic person. I joined this project because I enjoy talking with people who are from different cultures, not just Canadians who I have been in contact with for quite a while.

Maggie

Hi! I’m a grade 12 student at Earl Haig Secondary School. I joined this project because I'm a youth community coordinator; I wanted to understand youth in Toronto and New York better so I could plan valuable events for them.

Tayseer

I am funny and I like to have conversations. I joined this project because I heard it's a good project and it was really a good one!!!

Yasmin

I love learning new things. I joined this project because I want to see and learn something new.

How does making, eating, and sharing food connect you to the places that you belong?

I find belonging in eating (and cooking!) alongside my friends and family.

I find that food not only connects and reminds me of my unique origins and cultural background, it can also evoke meaningful memories of people and experiences that bring me a deeper sense of happiness.

Make me feel good and connect me to the place I belong to.

It’s enjoyable, it creates memories of me and my family and friends.

It connects me to traditional food and make me happy :)

It first makes me feel like I am with my family, eating together in the same time 😊🌻

Cooking is the fun part of my meals, the time taken and procedures followed are shown in a success of the smile I create on my family and friends.

It make me connect to the family and places. I feel that I am with them.