Negotiating Identities Through Food: Northeastern Migrants and Racism in Urban India

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_28How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Racism; Northeast Indian; NE Cuisine; Lived Experience

Abstract

This study explores how cuisine, culture, and racism intersect in the everyday experiences of people from Northeast (NE) India in mainland Indian cities. The NE people are very distinct in terms of social-cultural, language, their lifestyle, food habit and ethnic identities from mainland India. However, their ‘looks’ often become the basis of their racialization, making them soft targets of racism and xenophobia, especially in urban spaces. Food, as an important marker of cultural identity, emerges as a significant site where racial stereotypes and social boundaries are produced and reinforced. The present study focuses on the local cuisine of Northeast India, and the construction of Northeastern identity as “outsider” in mainland Indian cities. The local neighbourhood in the city has constructed the stereotypical image through their own experience from the media of the Northeast people’s cuisine and other Southeast Asian countries. Methodologically, the qualitative approach was adopted in the study. Using snowball sampling, in-depth interviews were conducted with Northeast migrants from mainland cities of India. The phenomenological framework has been used to understand the lived experience of Northeast migrants. The finding shows that racial stereotypes and prejudice are often linked to assumptions and stigma attached to food habits, which further deepen the racial othering processes and social exclusion. The study is important as it contributes to the understanding of food cuisine and racism in India, an unexplored dimension of everyday racism in urban mainland India.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sapana Devi Karam
AU  - Inatoli Shohe
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
TI  - Negotiating Identities Through Food: Northeastern Migrants and Racism in Urban India
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Food Studies: Intersections of Culture, Science and Sustainability (ICEFS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 304
EP  - 316
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_28
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_28
ID  - Karam2026
ER  -