Authentic Immigrant Food
Taking a break from reading the news and looking at social media is supposed to help mitigate burnout when it comes to processing various political developments (i.e. flaming heaps of rotted garbage) but personally I haven’t gotten there yet. Thus, ailing as usual in the vast digital landscape, part overgrown, thorny wilderness, part desert as burning and raw as a sore throat, I came across a commercial that has been making the rounds again online.
Edeka, Germany’s biggest supermarket chain made a commercial in 2017 where they removed all products not from Germany from the shelves of one of their stores. Shoppers featured in the video were varying shades of confused and indignant that instead of their usual tea, coffee, and chocolate, there were vast, empty rows dotted with colorful placards bearing different messages of antiracism like, “Without diversity we are poorer” and “This is how empty a shelf is without foreigners.”
The cold water that customers were doused with upon walking into a nearly empty supermarket intended to signal that if anti-immigration rhetoric is given political power, then they can kiss their morning quinoa bowls with avocado and olive oil, bye bye. It wasn’t just the obviously non-German products that were gone. Most of the cold cut meats, something which is often found on the German breakfast table were also gone, as opposed to a surprising number of untouched convenience foods still available like readymade fried potatoes, whipped cream in the can, and vacuum packed Spätzle. It helps dispel any myth of some kind of “authentically German” diet when the (white) German shoppers were clearly mortified that most of their usual products weren’t available. Luckily there was still plenty of beer.
Although Edeka is a big chain who undoubtedly saw a good marketing opportunity and there are flaws to their simplistic approach, I wouldn’t rush to throw the commercial onto the same pile as say, the cringey as hell, Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial which taught us that a white supermodel offering soda to a police officer is all we needed in order to end targeted police violence against Black people… The concept was simple and it was meant to spark conversations, all of which made it repost catnip – although there’s plenty of room for debate as if that’s a good or bad thing. Whether it intended to or not, the commercial also highlighted the disconnect in Northern Europe (like other parts of the industrialised world) between the food we eat and where it comes from.
It’s this sort of luxury, the one which allows us to eat bananas and avocados and sliced meat with teddy bear faces on it all year round, which is the result of a demand that comes at a human, animal and environmental cost. Obviously the scare factor is much higher in other sectors such as healthcare, but for me, where the commercial falls short is in its reducing diversity to products and foodstuffs.
In fairness, the customers in the Edeka commercial who were interviewed, spoke up in support of a diverse and inclusive Germany. However, removing the products puts more emphasis on showing how our own comfortable lives will be disturbed. Ok, feta and olive oil aren’t produced in Germany, so they’re gone. But who do you think picks the arugula, tomatoes and peppers, that are all labeled as originating in Germany? Think about the migrant labour existing within “your” borders – I speak largely to the US and Germany for the purpose of this article, but if you come from a country that utilizes migrants as cheap labour across industries, then I speak to you too. It’s an open secret that migration is the backbone of our food systems and had the commercial acknowledged that, there would be a lot more empty shelves.
When I first moved to Germany, after two years of living in Korea, my cholesterol levels probably experienced an alarming spike from the amount of cheese I was consuming. Although things are probably different now, back when I lived in Korea it was difficult and expensive to buy cheese that wasn’t string or processed slices. So when I came here and discovered you could get fresh mozzarella balls and whole wedges of Parmigiano Reggiano for only a couple of euros, I was buying cheese by the armload – since inflation I have adjusted my food budget to account for inflation so that I may continue to buy mozzarella in such a quantity.
Naively, I didn’t spare much thought at first about looking past the apparent authenticity surrounding these two iconically Italian products. Authenticity doesn’t hold the same meaning once you remember whose labour is responsible for that product. It feels shameful considering I come from California where it’s now a hideous mainstay to see videos of migrant workers bent over fields of artichokes, strawberries, spinach, etc. harvesting for our smoothies and with improvised nose and mouth protection as the land literally burns behind them, staining the air a poisonous orange. I let my assumptions and the supposed idyll of a mozzarella ball package with a picture of caprese salad on it blur the truth. Really though, why does every mozzarella have a picture of a caprese on the label?
In her book Punjabi Parmesan: Dispatches from a Europe in Crisis, author and journalist Pallavi Aiyar offers us reflections of Europe through the eyes of a South Asian woman whose myth of a “pretty, stable, pleasant” Europe in which to raise her family is quickly shattered. As the title suggests, Aiyar’s main focus was to interview Punjabi laborers across Europe of which there is a surprisingly large number. In her interviews across different industries, she concludes that “What was evident as I traveled around the continent was what a jumbled world immigration had created.”
So, as the book’s title also alludes to, there would be none of the authentic Italian cheeses like Parmesan and mozzarella, without the Sikh Punjabis of northern India. Sikh migrant workers are credited with rescuing the Italian cheese industry. Part of a thriving diaspora, Sikhs make up about 0.3% of the total population with actual numbers probably much higher due to the number of undocumented laborers.
The first wave of Sikh migration to Italy took place in the 1980s. The eighties and nineties were a tumultuous period in Indian history and politics and many who came to Europe did so to escape targeted political violence. The creation of a separate Sikh state has been a topic since the 1930s, before Partition. But the Sikh separatist movement reached its apex in the eighties with the formation of several armed Punjabi insurgencies who carried out violent attacks across the state. In response to the failed negotiations between the insurgents and the government, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian armed forces to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar in the summer of 1984 to flush out separatist leaders who had taken refuge there. The result was a bloody siege which lasted ten days. The official line is that only 400 were killed but witnesses have maintained for decades that the number was in the thousands. On October 31 of that same year, Prime Minister Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards who were Sikh. This act sparked waves of violent anti-Sikh riots whose brutality was often spurred on by members of the Congress Party. It’s a period which the Indian government has yet to officially apologize for. This is by the way, a very abridged explanation of this period of history, but hopefully it offers a brief insight into the dangers of being a Sikh at that time.
Around the same period, Italy was experiencing an economic boom which meant that young people were turning away from hard physical labor jobs with long hours in favor of office professions where the hours were consistent and the pay higher. The cheese industry was in danger of going under until arriving Sikh migrants filled the gaps left by the Italian youth. While some Sikhs went to work in factories and even travelling circuses, many found work in dairy farming.
It’s a crossover that often made sense given that agriculture dominates Punjab’s GDP. The state ranks third in wheat production and seventh in dairy production in India. Even the world famous Punjabi dance, bhangra, is originally a folk dance which celebrates the harvest time. Perhaps for those who came from a farming background it was comforting to sink into the familiarity of tasks like caring for and milking the cows when they were so far from home and didn’t initially speak the language. Presumably, the basic lifestyle of farming is much the same around the work, so the routine must have also been somewhat easier to adapt to. Although many Sikhs who work in cheese production have somewhat humorously pointed out that the farming lifestyle fits so well because Sikhs wake up early anyway to pray.
A typical day in the cowsheds is split into two shifts of cleaning the stalls and feeding and milking the cows with one shift in the morning and one in the late afternoon. It’s dirty, physically demanding work which is why so many farms had trouble employing new people before that first immigration wave. But their presence has also expanded to the actual cheese-making process. I came across only one instance where a Parmesan producer, Maurizio Novelli, emphasized that while the Sikh husband and wife team he employed have done the dairy work for him for a long time, they don’t do the actual cheesemaking.
In one section of Punjabi Parmesan, Aiyar travels to Rome to interview the First Secretary in charge of information at the Indian embassy about the labour situation. “‘Italy needed labour and since the late 1980s Indians have been providing it. It’s worked well because they (the Italians) see the Indians as reliable, enterprising and quite docile. They work hard and don’t demand things like some of these others…’ the First Secretary left the rest of the sentence dangling complicitly between us.”
While on a three-day visit to Latina in Central Italy where the majority of Punjabi labourers work on vegetable or dairy farms, Aiyar interviewed many who had made the harrowing journey from India to Europe with the intention to stay and build a life for themselves and their families. Haribhajan Singh, a worker for a timber company had obtained his residence permit after ten years along with the rare bonus of a permanent job contract. “‘We’re cheaper than most other immigrants,’ he boasted,” referring to his sixty-five euros per day salary (plus some occasional overtime pay). While some, like Haribhajan Singh were lucky enough to have obtained residence permits, others’ undocumented status meant that they were paid only three or four euros per day. Because of the demand for labour, the police were often willing to look the other way. However, even those with a more stable situation were still vulnerable enough that demanding higher wages, or in Singh’s case, protective gear when felling trees wouldn’t have yielded much results.
Despite the conditions, most of the people Aiyar spoke to had a lot of pride in their individual contribution to Latina’s thriving industries. It therefore feels reductive on my part to frame this story in the context of the Punjabi workers as helpless victims of an exploitative system. It’s well known among those in food production that if all of the Indian labourers were to go on strike, production of cheeses like Parmesan, mozzarella and Grana Padano would collapse.
If the words of the First Secretary are any proof, then there’s no doubt that the labour system exploits their migrant workers. In the worst cases – and a lot of cases are of the worst kind – labourers are tracked and controlled by organized crime groups and it’s not uncommon for people in places like Latina to do work like picking radishes without being paid for months. Many end up addicted to hard drugs or even commit suicide as a way to escape their horrific situation.
But it’s also true that despite enormous challenges, Punjabi immigrants have built lives here. They have raised families and established networks in order to support fellow workers. There are now several generations born of those migrant families, who were born, raised and educated in Italy while maintaining a strong connection to their Punjabi roots.
If you’re looking for one of those success stories (although I will say that some media outlets are guilty of using this story to deflect from the more problematic stories), the town of Novellara and its successes figures into most rosier narratives about the cheese industry. Located in the Po Valley in the region of Reggio Emilia which is nicknamed the “Food Valley,” Novellara seems to be something of a cozy little anomaly.
The Punjabi community there has also grown beyond the work in cheese production including small businesses, and working for the municipality. There are about sixty Gurudwaras, or Sikh temples, despite the fact that Sikhism, the fifth largest religion in the world, is still not officially recognized in Italy (it has the same status as an organisation or club). Novellara boasts the first, largest Gurudwara in Italy and it is considered one of the most important in Europe. But Novellara is also a multi-religious community which regularly celebrates Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu festivals. If you find yourself in Novellara, maybe you can even visit the photo exhibition ‘Stories of Young Sikh’ which honors the contributions of Sikhs from this region, to Italian society.
Around 2015, when Europe was experiencing an economic downturn, coupled with the beginning of the refugee crisis, people noticed the sudden shifts in attitude towards them coinciding with the right-wing populism thriving in the open across Europe. Back in the first wave of migration, incoming Sikhs were “highly encouraged” to cut their hair and remove their turbans to avoid looking like what white Europeans would view as terrorists. Hair is sacred to the Sikh religion and they are forbidden to cut it. To do so in order to be accepted isn’t an act of mere vanity, it’s one which violates a deeply held principle.
A decade later and right-wing populism has only grown in strength, but so has the resolve of many of the workers to not only continue to do their jobs, but to hope that they will be judged not by their origins, but by their qualities as a human being. As I write this, there are so many extreme and dangerous policy shifts happening towards migrants in the US, and here in Germany. So it’s important to not treat examples like the seeming harmony in Novellara as the norm rather than the exception.
The more alarming norm is that people I have known for years are beginning to show some ugly sides even though at this point I’m quite used to people going out of their way to say that they have no problem with immigrants as long as they’re the hardworking kind, unlike the supposed waves of criminals overrunning the country and sucking the system dry. In this situation, I’m supposedly outside their fire by virtue of (according to their perception) being supposedly more hardworking. Translation: I can pass white enough in my behaviour to keep them comfortable.
In reality, people with such rhetoric really mean that they don’t have an issue with immigrants as long as they “stay in their place” at the back of the line, complacent, hardworking and thankful for whatever they get without daring to expect or demand more. Considering I live in a part of the country with some of the lowest migrant populations in the country, an act as simple as going to a Vietnamese restaurant or eating the occasional Döner makes it easier for them to pat themselves on the back for not being openly discriminatory.
These aren’t meant to be judgements dispensed on an entire nation, but they are certainly a fairly common pattern in my experiences since living here. I’ve had to swallow my anger, listening to people try to explain that choosing a political party whose main goal is to foment hate is the sensible choice because the other government made such a mess of the economy, as if there’s a one-to-one comparison. When I initially set out to write this piece, I didn’t think the events of late would factor so heavily into it, which makes no sense given that I’m talking about immigration. This also wasn’t intended as a space to vent my anger, but it’s relevant and it has to go somewhere productive, am I right?
My original intention was to tell something of the story of the Sikh diaspora in Italy and specifically the cheese industry in the context of debunking the idea of authenticity when it comes to western food culture.
Authenticity is a word which could be used with good intention, but instead has been weaponised into an artisanal version of the word “purity” and therein lies an obvious reason why we unavoidably circle back to the current socio political climate.
In a very broad sense, authenticity functions as a category membership and what is called into question is whether or not something fits into a particular category or if something belongs to the category it’s purported to. Undoubtedly this leaves a lot of room for interpretation and the boundaries fuzzy.
Much of my own experience with the word is in the context of “ethnic” coded foods which are weighed with the burden of an authenticity associated with being the cheap and grubby foil to Western cuisines, the latter of which are afforded more freedom to reinterpret ways of eating. But then there’s the Punjabi labourers making Parmigiano Reggiano and mozzarella. What happens to the concept of authenticity when the labour behind these products is largely not Italian?
For the European Union, authenticity has to a certain degree been enshrined into laws. There are a number of geographical indicators including the PDO and PGI which set specifications on the naming, ingredients and process of foodstuffs, agricultural products, and wines and spirits. This is, according to the EU website’s agriculture section, to “establish intellectual property rights for specific products whose qualities are specifically linked to the area of production.”
The Parmesan being produced in Novellara for example is a PDO, or Protected Designation of Origin product. This means it can be sold as Parmigiano Reggiano a name which is allowed only when the Parmesan is produced in Reggio Emilia, Parma, Modena, and Bologna regions to the left of the Reno River and in Mantua to the right of the Po River. (Unfortunately, the provisions also extend to the recipe, so in case you’re a vegetarian – or not a beef eater – who was late to the party, Parmigiano Reggiano is in fact not vegetarian due to the use of animal rennet as a coagulant. I’m sorry, I cried too.)
Having some sort of organising body which protects or archives traditional methods, ingredients, and practices is not inherently a bad thing. Coming from a family where “recipes” are passed down using a confusing, grandma method of measurement it brings a sort of comfort. However, the EU is not the only part of the world with geographical indicators due to trade agreements. Colombian coffee has had a PDO since 2007 and Australian wine has various broader geographical indicators. An organising body should exist only as a kind of cultural archive, and not as these two products which are present in their respective lands through colonisation demonstrate, as a way to not only raise the status of comparatively generic and mass produced versions of a protected product, but to also squeeze the competition from the market by slapping a seal on it which claims to speak for superior quality as well as tradition.
Taking back authenticity for something good is a start. The sort of authenticity which is far more valuable is the kind that exists among families and communities. One which is not only hotly debated across geographical boundaries, but enjoyed at the same table as well. There are boundaries here too, for example you can put oat milk into masala chai to make it vegan which I would argue doesn’t harm authenticity. But throw said chai into a martini shaker with ice and tequila and you’ve gone off the rails. At this point it’s naive to think that any radical social or geopolitical changes could come from discussions or different implementations of this word.
The Edeka commercial showed how easy it can be to disconnect the people behind our food production. The story of the Sikh diaspora in Italy can be represented as a triumph for the way in which many overcame challenges in order to build a life there. But that same story can also be used to shield one of the seemingly normalised ways in which food can be weaponized. Still, when there is friendly discourse and sharing across communities of something that is authentic to you, that has true value. (Just don’t let anyone convince you that cilantro and parsley are interchangeable. I will go to food war on that point.)
Whilst traipsing through the algorithm the other day, I found another video clip that’s making the rounds again from Trevor Noah’s standup comedy special Son of Patricia. In this clip he makes the case that (in America) you’re allowed to hate immigrants, but then you’re no longer allowed to eat their foods. Not a single dish, not a single spice. In that case, haters should also not be allowed to eat anything picked, processed, or produced by immigrants. I would also say to those people “enjoy your plain, boiled poh-tay-tohs,” but who knows how long you haters would last trying to dig them up.