Ravi K.S. Kohli

Food and its meaning for asylum seeking children and young people in foster care

There is little in the existing literature in refugee studies, foster care and the anthropology of food about the ways refugee and asylum seeking children regard food. This piece reports on two initiatives that delineate ways children seeking asylum and their carers understand food. The first is a research study examining unaccompanied asylum seeking childrens perception of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, within which they focus on food and survival after arrival in the UK. The second, based on interviews with foster carers, is a practice orientated enquiry about food and its meaning in foster care. The findings suggest that food is related to many aspects of finding sanctuary, negotiating belonging within the foster family, and can powerfully evoke being at ‘home’ in a new land.