Bringing the immigrant back into the sociology of taste Krishnendu Ray Department of Nutrition and Food Studies, New York University, 411Lafayette Str., 5th Floor, New York 10003, United States article info Article history: Received 12 August 2016 Accepted 10 October 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Immigration Ethnicity Cultural sociology Taste abstract The sociology of food consumption has emerged as a robust field with rich empirical material and engaged theorization about taste, omnivorousness, distinction, and practice theory. Nevertheless, there are continuing empirical and conceptual lacunae. Although transnational and rural-to-urban migrants play a crucial role in food businesses in many global cities, they are mostly unaccounted for in the so- ciology of taste. Taking the American case, in particular based on data from New York City, this article provides reasons for that gap and shows what might be gained if migrants were accounted for in the urban sociology of taste. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction United States Census data on occupations and birthplace, which we have since 1850 (Ruggles Alexander, Genadek, Goeken, Schroeder et al., 2004), show that the foreign-born have domi- nated food-related occupations such as baker, butcher, brewer, saloon keeper, and restaurateur. Although the source of migration changed from Northern Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, to the Mediterranean at the end of the nineteenth century, then to Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in the second half of the twentieth century, migrants continued to dominate food- making occupations. On the eve of the Civil War, for instance, seventy percent of bakers in NYC were immigrants, often German and Irish. In spite of some variation through the decennial Census, those patterns remain remarkably consistent. In contrast, lawyers and school teachers, among all the occupations, had the least number of foreign-born – only five to ten percent. By 2010, seventy- five percent of chefs and head cooks in NYC were foreign born, while thirty-five percent were so nationally. Nearly one-half of all small business owners in New York City today are immigrants, including 69 percent of restaurant owners, and 84 percent of small grocery store owners (Foner, 2013, p. 21, Kallick in Foner, 2013, p. 80). Given this kind of data it would be perverse to be interested in immigrant lives and uninterested in food. Yet that has been the norm. 2. The historiography of labor and immigration Although the journalistic material is replete with stories of immigrant restaurateurs there is surprisingly little scholarly work of greater duration that theoretically engages with taste in the metropolis from the point of view of the foreign-born. Among scholars, historians have been better at recording the doings of immigrant shopkeepers and grocers, because, often literate, they keep records. In particular, labor and immigration historians are particularly good at picking up the scent of food in poor peoples' records (Levenstein, 1988, 1993; Gabaccia, 1998; Diner, 2003; Pilcher, 2012, 2016). Of course the task is easier said than done, especially in history writing, both due to attitudes and sources, or lack of it. Sometimes, the archives do not collaborate with the good intentions of scholars working on the non-literate poor. In sociology there is a robust literature on ethnic entrepre- neurship with a number of strong claims: low capital requirements make it relatively easier for foreign-born entrepreneurs to enter into the highly competitive business of feeding others that most native-born do not find desirable. Niche cultural knowledge gives them a competitive edge over better-capitalized mainstream en- trepreneurs. Kin or fictive kin networks of loyalty allow the lending of money on a rotating basis without collateral. Self-exploita- tiondlong hours of work and unpaid labor of kin and fictive kindpermits these enterprises to compete with better-capitalized businesses. Large corporations often cannot respond quickly to fickle changes in fashion, while small enterprises can adapt with speed. Finally, both migration and entrepreneurship exhibit serial patterns. People who know each other typically migrate from the same regions and work in and own similar enterprises, which are E-mail address: Krishnendu.ray@nyu.edu. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Appetite journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.10.013 0195-6663/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Appetite xxx (2016) 1e7 Please cite this article in press as: Ray, K., Bringing the immigrant back into the sociology of taste, Appetite (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.appet.2016.10.013