"In Its Own Image" : Fashioning the Canadian Multicultural Mirage in Food Production, Consumption, and Equality

With bucolic imaginings, it is commonplace to lament the social and physical distance that separates us from the production of our food. In a dystopic distanciation, food becomes a static product--commodified, fetishized, and objectified--while our relationship to it, increasingly antagonistic. Indeed, food provides a unique aperture into the 'malaises of modernity' (Taylor 1991) when 'simple' questions in fact reveal complex dynamics, processes, and symptoms covering a range of questions: From what is our food made? From where? And by whom? In highlighting the dialectic of the selective of producers, the unrestricted mobility of commodities and capital, and the immobility of land, this paper draws linkages between food, labour and migration through an analysis of their ordering principles that affront the 'privilege' of Canadian citizenship, the rights it confers, and the responsibilities it demands. For the study of immigration and settlement in Canada or more globally, Canada's active role in shaping the life conditions of the migrants it receives, these lines of inquiry cannot be ignored.