“New food cultures” and the absent food citizen: immigrants in urban food policy discourse

Abstract

Multicultural cities in the Global North are rapidly developing and releasing urban food policies that outline municipal visions of sustainable food systems. In turn, these policies shape conceptions of food citizenship in the city. While these policies largely absorb activities previously associated with “alternative” food systems, little is known about how they respond to critical food and race scholars who have noted that these food practices and spaces have historically marginalized immigrants. A critical discourse analysis of 22 urban food policies from Global North cities reveals that most policies do not meaningfully consider immigrant foodscapes, foodways, and food-related labour. Many promote hegemonic and/or ethno-nationalistic understandings of “healthy” and “sustainable” food without recognizing immigrants’ food-related knowledge and skills. Policies largely fail to connect the topic of immigrant labour with goals like shortening supply chains, subject immigrant neighbourhoods to stigmatizing health discourses, and lack acknowledgement of the barriers immigrants may face to participating in sustainable food systems. Relatedly, policy discourses articulate forms of food citizenship that emphasize individual obligations over rights related to food. This jeopardizes the potential for immigrants to be seen as belonging to dominant political urban food communities and benefitting from the symbolic and material rewards associated with them.

Introduction

Food systems transformation — or the process of making food systems more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable — has become a core element of urban sustainable development agendas. Over 200 cities have signed the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP), a non-binding agreement for municipal governments to improve the sustainability and resilience of urban food systems. Many of these cities, mainly but not exclusively in the Global North, have created urban food policies to document, plan, and guide food-related activities (Moragues-Faus and Battersby 2021). The discourses deployed within these policies disseminate a state-sanctioned vision of the social, economic, and ecological norms of how the city relates to food now and in the future (Hayes-Conroy and Sweet 2015; Hoekstra 2018; Linton 2020). These visions often include activities like buying “local food” or urban gardening. In wider food policy discourse, people who participate in such activities are often called “food citizens”, a term used to champion individuals who actively engage in efforts to promote a more sustainable food system (Birnbaum and Lütke 2023; Jhagroe 2019; O’Kane 2016).

However, these types of previously “alternative” sustainable food activities now supported by urban food policies in the Global North have been critiqued on the part that they “often normalize and promote dominant food practices, creating hegemonic “white food spaces” (Alkon and McCullen 2011; Huang 2020; Matacena 2016; Minkoff-Zern 2014, p. 1192; Slocum 2007). These dynamics call into question who is considered or able to become a food citizen. This is a particularly urgent consideration for migrants, immigrants, and their descendants (referred to from here on simply as immigrants)¹ in cities, particularly racialized immigrants from the Global South. Such communities often face specific linguistic, cultural, social, and economic barriers to accessing and participating in urban food systems as well as systemic discrimination and racism in Global North contexts (Barwick and Beaman 2019; Hellgren 2019; Hellgren and Bereményi 2022; Polasub et al. 2023; Silverstein 2005). Additionally, although immigrants make up large shares of the labour force that feeds cities, their existing contributions to a sustainable food system often go unrecognized (Fitting et al. 2023; Gibb and Wittman 2013; Huang 2020). Immigrants may find that their foodscapes (the places and spaces where food is acquired, prepared, discussed, or otherwise acted upon, and all the discursive, social, and material relations embedded in these landscapes) and foodways (the practices of food production, procurement, preparation, and consumption as defined by cultural and social customs) are excluded from dominant narratives on sustainable food systems (Joassart-Marcelli 2021). Their food-related labour, as well as the knowledge they hold about sustainable food, can also be overlooked or disregarded (Brons et al. 2020; Diekmann et al. 2018; MacGregor et al. 2019; Mares 2012; Minkoff-Zern 2014). This raises critical questions about whose food citizenship is articulated and enabled by urban food policies (Moragues-Faus and Battersby 2021; Moragues-Faus and Marsden 2017).

A nascent body of food research is beginning to examine the intersections between food and justice. To date, however, none has focused on the relationship between urban food policy and immigrant specifically. This study seeks to understand how 22 urban food policies from cities in the Global North constitute a form of governmentality through a critical discourse analysis. Specifically, it examines how these policies portray immigrants and their foodways, foodscapes, and food-related labour in relation to food citizenship. Its findings show that urban food policies largely emphasize citizen obligation over state-assured rights and political participation. Some policy discourses stigmatize immigrant communities and their foodways as a barrier to the city’s transformation toward a more sustainable food system; others instrumentalize their cultures and labour to foster the diverse urban foodscapes that make cities desirable “cosmopolitan” destinations. Meanwhile, cities rarely address the systemic barriers that prevent immigrant consumers, producers, and workers from having their food-related knowledge, practices, and activities recognized and supported as legitimate. As urban food policies become increasingly commonplace, this paper calls for a new focus on immigrants in the food futures they imagine.

Literature review

Urban food policies, alternative food systems, and immigrants in the Global North

Cities around the world are fast becoming centers of sustainable food activity (Candel 2020; Mendes and Sonnino 2018; Morgan and Sonnino 2010; Smaal et al. 2021; Zerbian & de Luis Romero, 2021). Supported by guiding fora like the MUFPP, dozens of cities have created urban food policies (sometimes also referred to as urban food strategies) that lay out plans to fund, legislate, regulate, or otherwise support particular types of food systems activities (Candel 2020; Moragues-Faus and Battersby 2021; Morgan and Sonnino 2010; Smaal et al. 2021). The goals of many urban policies are similar: cities want to increase local food production and consumption; use food as a tool for economic development; increase citizen education around healthy and sustainable food, and promote urban agriculture and gardening (Candel 2020). As such, these policies largely absorb and amplify the key activities of what was previously termed “alternative food networks” (AFNs) in the Global North. Proponents of AFNs called for behaviours like “voting with your fork”, buying local and organic, shopping at farmer’s markets, and joining urban gardens (Matacena 2016).

At the same time, many of the cities creating urban food policies are becoming increasingly culturally diverse through consistent or rising immigration. Immigrants to the Global North disproportionately settle in cities, where economic opportunities are more plentiful and diaspora networks are more installed (Gebhardt 2014; Government of Canada, 2022; Patuzzi 2020). Diverse Global North cities straddle two worlds. On one hand, their diversity allows them to present themselves as cosmopolitan sites of liberalism and inclusion. On the other, they remain anchored in post-colonial or settler-colonial contexts where inflammatory public rhetoric and hardline immigration policy chafe against demographic incentives to attract migrant labour (Huot et al. 2016; Joassart-Marcelli 2021; Polasub et al. 2023). Despite the promises of equality, immigrants in Global North cities often experience discrimination and inequalities related to race/ethnicity, culture, gender, class, citizenship, and language proficiency, which manifest in unequal outcomes related to health, labour, housing, education, transportation, and food security (Barwick and Beaman 2019; Dou et al. 2022; Hammelman 2018; Hellgren 2019; MacGregor et al. 2019; Mares 2012; Safi 2010; Sharareh et al. 2023; Zick et al. 2008). These inequalities are even higher for undocumented immigrants who may lack access to state services and the job market (Carney 2014).

Many critical food scholars have highlighted alternative food as a concept that both symbolically and materially excludes racialized, low-income, and immigrant communities (Alkon 2013; Alkon and McCullen 2011; Guthman 2008a, b; Slocum 2007, 2011). While alternative food activities are set as the “standard for good food practices” (Goodman et al. 2010; Joassart-Marcelli 2021, p. 12) and people who engage in such behaviours are regarded as “food citizens” (Gómez-Benito and Lozano 2014; O’Kane 2016), participation is frequently coded as white. This is problematic for urban food policy, given that the cities now formally championing these such activities are home to highly diverse populations (Joassart-Marcelli 2021, p. 23). Such dynamics raise the question: how do urban food policies account for this diversity of bodies, cultures, foodways and foodscapes? Who is a food citizen in the sustainable food city?

Most research on the topic of AFNs and race, ethnicity, and inclusion has included immigrants as a subset of racialized (i.e., categorized as “ethnic” or “foreign” and assumed to possess certain characteristics based on their skin colour, culture, or religion) communities more broadly (Hellgren 2019; Hellgren and Bereményi 2022; Ostenso et al. 2020; Silverstein 2005; Smaal et al. 2021; Zickgraf et al. 2024). This study, however, centres on the figure of the immigrant. I argue that immigrants warrant additional discussion as a unique political category² in the context of urban food systems change, even if some of their oppressions overlap with those of wider racialized and low-income communities. Additionally, while cities with urban food policies receive immigrants across all hemispheres, there are dynamics particular to immigrants in Global North cities, where most urban food policies originate, that merit specific attention.

Although the movement of peoples and their cultures can significantly impact local sustainability practices, the link between migration and sustainable development remains underexplored in scholarship and policy (Franco Gavonel et al. 2021; Zickgraf et al. 2024). Many immigrants to the Global North come from cultures emphasizing what would be considered “sustainable” food practices by dominant discourses and possess valuable food knowledge and skills (Brons et al. 2020; MacGregor et al. 2019; Soma 2016). Although food practices are culturally inflected regardless of one’s migration status or background, for immigrants, food can take on heightened importance in the maintenance of identity and community. As Mares (2012) writes, migration is “inherently a process of dislocation” in the face of which food is a powerful way to “enact one’s cultural identity and sustain connections with families and communities” (p.335). These dislocated links to food, compounded with structural inequities in urban life, mean that immigrants have specific needs and challenges in urban food systems, including language barriers, difficulty finding desired foods, and unfamiliarity with local foodscapes and politics (Moffat et al. 2017; Park and Yi 2023; Polasub et al. 2023).³

There is also the question of immigrant labour. Most readers living in major cities will recognize that urban foodscapes simultaneously shape and are shaped by immigrant cultures and workers, many of them poorly paid and in precarious situations (Carney 2014; Cook et al. 1999; Diekmann et al. 2018; Guo et al. 2022; Minkoff-Zern 2014). The recent “foodie” turn towards valorizing engagement with immigrant foodscapes as a form of cultural capital reflects “a moment characterized by a seemingly growing openness to cultural diversity often described as cosmopolitanism” — a phenomenon rife with dynamics of displacement, appropriation, and erasure (hooks 2014; Joassart-Marcelli 2021, p. 4). Scholars have highlighted how alternative food spaces that cater to white, affluent consumers largely exclude immigrants, particularly racialized ones; when immigrants do engage with the dominant norms of food sustainability, their efforts go unrecognized (Alkon and McCullen 2011; Fitting et al. 2023; Gibb and Wittman 2013; Huang 2020; Minkoff-Zern 2014; Slocum 2007). As a result, the existing and potential contributions of immigrant foodways and foodscapes to sustainable food systems are rendered invisible — or even framed as problematic (Minkoff-Zern 2014). This is true at both the grassroots and policy level: MacGregor et al. (2019) and Zickgraf et al. (2024) show how policymakers in the UK and Europe view racialized immigrant communities as “hard to reach” in the context of sustainability and associate a lack of language skills with a lack of knowledge on sustainability.

Urban food policy discourse, governmentality, and food citizenship

Together, these findings demonstrate that food is a powerful lens to magnify the relationship between immigration and sustainability, and conversely, that immigrants are an important political category to consider in urban food systems change. However, little empirical work has been done on the confluence of immigrants and urban food policy. Puupponnen et al. (2023) examined national Finnish food policies for justice orientations, noting that immigrants were scantly referenced despite their significant presence in Finnish society and its food system. Smaal et al. (2021) analyzed the presence of concepts related to social justice in 16 mid-sized European cities, finding limited (but unquantified) references to a range of identity categories including “refugees” and few attempts to parse out structural inequalities in the food system (p.719)⁴. Polasub et al. (2023) reviewed food and other municipal policies from the Metro Vancouver area specifically for language related to immigration and found limited mention of immigrants and their needs. More theoretically, scholars have pointed out that the cultural acceptability of food, a key dimension of food security, is mainly deployed within food policy discourse to denote food desirable to cultural minorities, including immigrants (Hammelman and Hayes-Conroy 2015). However, as Béné et al. (2019) aptly note, the overarching goal of promoting sustainability in the food system can be at odds with cultural food preferences. How this tension is addressed in food policy, and how immigrants are represented in policies more generally, is not clear. This paper seeks to fill these gaps by examining, for the first time, urban food policy discourse related to immigrants at a multi-city scale.

Urban food policy discourse can be understood as written manifestations of ideologies and power in a wider social context. By choosing what to emphasize or omit, policy discourses make some issues around food visible and obscure others; they tacitly legitimize particular knowledge(s) about food and assert how food in the city can and should be governed (Jhagroe 2019). In this sense, these policy discourses conjure sustainable food “imaginaries”, or the “mental or cognitive mappings of urban reality”(Soja 2000, p. 324) that form a “metanarrative connecting notions of urban society’s past, present, and future nature” (Hoekstra 2018, p. 364). Urban food policy discourses reveal whose lives, experiences, and practices are legitimized in the dominant imaginary, and conversely, whose agencies may be perceived as deviant, wayward, or problematic (Hammelman 2018). Accordingly, analyzing policy discourse reveals how patterns of power and subjugation related to immigrants in the Global North may be folded into text, which can shape lived experiences in turn (Huot et al. 2016; Joassart-Marcelli 2021).

A central way that power manifests through discourse is by articulating how residents are encouraged or expected to act (Huot et al. 2016). Without citizen engagement, a food policy is just a paper. Sustainable food activities in particular require citizen activation given food’s daily, personal, and embodied aspects. It is the bodies and minds — or “minded-bodies” (J. Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy 2013, p. 86) — of citizens who must bring it to life through their activities. In this sense, urban food policies also constitute a form of Foucauldian “food governmentality”: ideologies and technology that not only dictate the behaviour of citizens but also create “specific realities” related to food and encourage citizens, through internalized mechanisms of self-control, to formulate new identities in relation to them (Huot et al. 2016; Jhagroe 2019, p. 193).

Fig. 1

Conceptual framework of urban food policy, sustainable food imaginaries, food governmentality, and food citizenship

This dimension of food-related subject formation configures articulations of food citizenship (see Fig. 1): that is, the engagement between individuals and the state vis-à-vis rights, obligations, and belonging (Birnbaum and Lütke 2023; Gómez-Benito and Lozano 2014; Jhagroe 2019; Lozano-Cabedo and Gómez-Benito 2017; O’Kane 2016). Although Gómez-Benito and Lozano assert that the “belonging” element associated with traditional citizenship models is less relevant to food — arguing that food connects citizens to ethnic, religious, or moral communities, but not political ones — the proliferation of state-led urban food policies reiterates that food is political. This is particularly true in an era where such policies can be perceived as expressions of cities’ commitments to progressive policy-making and a proclamation of their liberal character (Moragues-Faus and Battersby 2021; Schiller-Merkens and Machin 2023; Sodano and Gorgitano 2022). As such, food citizenship involves participation in a political community; to be a food citizen is to belong within a city’s sustainable food imaginary.

Gómez-Benito and Lozano (2017) also argue that food citizenship involves being assured certain rights by the state, including the right to safe, nutritious, sufficient food and the dismantling of inequalities that prevent access to it. Here, it is worth noting that scholars have critiqued the premise of relying on rights to secure justice in liberal society: rights focus on individual rather than collective outcomes and configure modes of “justice” that tacitly endorse the hegemony of the liberal state (Ahmed 2022; Amiri 2020; Berger 2023; Coulthard 2007; Lever 2000). However, as this paper deals with policies disseminated by municipalities, we are already situated squarely in the realm of state power. This paper does not seek to argue that the relationship between food citizenship, rights, and justice merits uncritical acceptance. Rather, it purports that understanding how the municipal apparatus configures food citizenship is the first step toward future efforts for civil society to challenge or subvert these hegemonic framings.

We now return to the final element of food citizenship: obligations. Governmentality works in part by normalizing certain expressions of personal practice. In constructing a theoretical model of food citizenship, Gómez-Benito and Lozano (2014) define a “food citizen” as someone who is:

…aware of the implications of social and environmental equity and of the wellbeing of animals, all of which is summarized in the expression “sustainable food.” Someone, in addition, whose personal food practices are coherent with these value orientations and these cognitive frameworks, and who participates in some way in collective actions oriented in this direction. And someone who attempts to participate in the governance of food affairs. (p.152)

Such framings are rife with potential tensions with immigrant foodways and foodscapes, given the nexus of food and culture and their specific needs, roles, and challenges in the food system. Who defines what constitutes “sustainable food”? Who decides in which direction values should be oriented, and therefore, whose obligations to the food system (and society writ-large) are being fulfilled? Does everyone have equal ability to fulfil those obligations? At play here is a notable semantic paradox: while food citizenship does not hinge on state citizenship, perceptions of immigrants (particularly racialized ones) as “non-citizens” may preclude policymakers and certain segments of society from considering them as food citizens (Beaman 2016; Zickgraf et al. 2024). Additionally, governmentality can be unevenly deployed: Hoekstra (2017, p. 128, 2019, p. 492) points out how urban policies ostensibly focused on neighbourhood renewal in the Netherlands demand that residents in immigrant-heavy neighbourhoods “show interest” in their locality and view its improvement as a “shared responsibility”. As such, by disseminating obligations related to urban citizenship, policies aim to bring areas with significant immigrant populations under state control (Hoekstra 2015).

If urban food policies, like other sustainable food activities, centre the white, affluent body in the objectives they require, their discourses then “create a binary of acceptable and unacceptable food consumers” which in turn, serves to segregate and (discursively and potentially materially) sanction those who do not or cannot engage with sustainable food movements (Huang 2020, p. 2). Cohen (2021) makes this potential visible in her study of whiteness and food policy in France, where she finds that white “French” eating practices are:

…elevated in law and culture to the status of normal and normative, against which other practices become deviant and problematic — think vegan or vegetarian diets, halal or kosher food, eating with one’s hands, or eating at times that do not conform with the three established daily meals. (p.28)

In this way, food discourses and policies can normalize white modes of relating to food and pathologize others. We can see this with how immigrant foodways are excluded from popular health fads, like the proliferation of a version of the Mediterranean Diet that is actually “a white diet” (Burt and College 2021, p. 42). We can also evoke less (apparently) culturally inflected examples: in an era where “local food” reigns supreme, where does that leave immigrant consumers who may enjoy and seek out food that is not, or cannot be, locally sourced? By examining how urban food policy discourses frame immigrant foodways, foodscapes, and labour, this paper seeks to demonstrate what these policies imply for immigrant relationships to food citizenship.

Methodology

The empirical heart of this paper is a critical discourse analysis of 22 urban food policies from 21 cities in the Global North (see Table 1). I define urban food policies as written strategies, action plans, or guiding documents published at least in part by a city’s municipal government which focus on transforming city food systems to make them more sustainable from social, economic, and environmental angles.⁵ I concentrated on cities in the Global North for three key reasons. First, most urban food policies documented by the MUFPP portal originate in Global North cities. Second, most existing scholarship on alternative food systems has originated from and focused on the Global North (particularly Canada and the US). This parallel allowed me to deepen the conversation between the literature and my analysis. Third, as documented in the literature review, immigrants – particularly racialized immigrants – face barriers to food systems access related to dynamics of race, belonging, and integration specific to post-colonial and settler-colonial Global North contexts. I focused my sample on larger cities, given that these cities are home to large shares of immigrant populations and their sheer number of residents means that their policies have the most impact on the largest number of people.

I coded policies in line with the principles of critical discourse analysis, which understands policy discourse as a representation of the ideologies and power imbued in semiotic data such as written and spoken text, and visuals, situated in a larger social context (Fairclough 2013; Hoekstra 2015; MacGregor et al. 2019; Thomas and Selimovic 2015; Wodak and Meyer 2009). Hook (2007) asserts that discourse “is both constituted by, and ensures the reproduction of, the social system, through forms of selection, exclusion, and domination” (p.522). An analysis of discourse present in urban food policies allows us to understand the political agendas that these policies may justify, as well as the ideologies underpinning the policies (Linton 2020). The discourses about immigrant foodways and foodscapes in urban food policies are “an institutionalized way of talking that regulates and reinforces action and thereby exerts power” (Wodak and Meyer 2009, p. 35). This understanding of discourse reinforces the idea that the semiotics of urban food policies have implications beyond the page in terms of whose knowledge about food is valued and (re)produced, what power relations they maintain, and what vision of the future they purport (Joassart-Marcelli 2021).

Accordingly, I did not code information given in policies merely at face value but rather deployed a critical interpretation of how the policy relates to larger patterns of power and repression, drawing on existing scholarship from critical food, migration, and race studies (e.g. Alkon and McCullen 2011; Hoekstra 2018, 2019; Huot et al. 2016; Slocum 2007). I also coded for what was not in the policy – areas where immigrants were not referenced and what these absences imply, or places in which policies are likely referring to immigrants but do not name them directly. Finally, I put policies into conversation with themselves: if one section of a policy referred to a neighbourhood having a high presence of immigrants and later referenced that neighbourhood as a priority site for policy implementation, I noted that immigrants may be the intended subject of the policy even if that was not made explicit in the text. In this way, I was able to uncover and interrogate power dynamics that may be embedded in the imaginary so deeply as to be implicit.

My sampling strategy (see Fig. 2) proceeded as follows. First, I used the MUFPP map to create a database of cities in the Global North that have signed onto the pact, suggesting that they might also have created comprehensive urban food policies. At the time of sampling (April 2023), this amounted to 112 cities. Then, I screened out cities with less than 250,000 inhabitants.⁶ This left me with a total of 68 cities.I then used both the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and internet searches to determine if these cities had what I would consider an “elaborate” urban food policy: a singular comprehensive policy, available publicly online and in writing, which approaches the sustainability of food systems from a range of entry points including the environment, health, and the economy.⁷ For these internet searches, I used a keyword combination of “[CITY NAME]+ “food policy” and/or “food strategy” in the relevant language(s) as a first step to identify whether a city had an elaborate food policy (if the policy was not linked to in the MUFPP map). If I could not identify a policy through a keyword search, I visited the municipality’s website directly and used the search bar (if available) to search for “food strategy” or “food policy” in the relevant language.

Fig. 2

Sampling strategy for urban food policies

Of the 68 cities in scope for evaluation, 30 had elaborate food strategies. I then selected a sample of these cities and policies using the following criteria: a maximum of two cities from each country represented, taking both the capital city (if available) as an emblematic example and after that, the city(s) with the largest relative populations of immigrants. I made exceptions for the United Sates (US), where I included four strategies due to its significantly greater population. as well as considerations related to the timing of policy releases.⁸ This left me with a total of 22 urban food policies from 21 cities.

Table 1 Cities and food policies sampled

The selected urban food policies were analyzed through a semi-inductive coding process using NVivo. Before beginning coding, I conducted keyword searches with NVivo of each policy for important words including: “migrant”, “immigrant”, “diversity”, “diverse”, “multicultural”, “refugees”, “asylum seeker”, “newcomers”, “culturally acceptable”, “culturally appropriate” to see how many times/where they came up in the policy. This allowed me to quickly garner an idea of whether a policy directly referred to immigrants in the city.

I built my initial codebook using key themes and sub-themes gleaned from the literature review. These themes related to the key concepts in the project’s research question (perceptions of immigrants, food citizenship, and food imaginaries). Then, I read through each policy line by line in NVivo, adding to and refining my codebook until my readings were no longer producing findings that suggested any changes or additions to the codes. This was a reflective process of coding and re-coding policies for newer codes if they had been analyzed before their inclusion. I finished with a total of 23 parent codes and 48 child codes.

In terms of limitations, this study looks at only policy discourse. It does not look at how the urban food policies are “proceeded beyond paper realities”, which can differ greatly from what policies suggest (Candel 2020; Smaal et al. 2021, p. 921). However, those paper realities remain critical indicators of a city’s ideal direction of travel at a particular moment in time. Additionally, I did not conduct further research on how policies were created, or by whom, which could further contextualize the final policy discourse.

Analysis

In the following sub-sections, I first seek to determine how urban food policies configure the concept of food citizenship. I then examine how immigrants are positioned in relation to it within urban food policy discourse.

How do urban food policies articulate ideals of food citizenship?

Urban food policy discourses portray the present situation of food in the city, as well as an ideal future. Many discourses conjure these imaginaries explicitly, in both their titles and high-level descriptions. Wellington City Council’s policy is titled “Our City’s Food Future” (2022), while the City of Brussels' 2015–2020 strategy says that it is “imagining Brussels in 2035…” (2015, p. 8). Policies often stake the changes they want to make as significant: the City of Barcelona’s policy claims that it “aim[s] to transform Barcelona’s food system and make it as sustainable as possible by 2030” (2022, p. 18). The Brussels 2015–2020 strategy wants to create “a new food culture” (2015, p. 12).

To these transformations, cities consistently call for citizen activation. Similar to other urban policies analyzed by Hoekstra (2015, 2017, 2018, 2019) any policies make explicit that the norms they disseminate require individuals to internalize and act upon them. “Everyone in London can do something to improve food,” says the Mayor of London’s policy (2018, p. 8). “Moving towards a healthy and sustainable food system cannot take place unless citizens and consumers make choices to support that goal,” the City of Toronto’s policy says (2010, p. 29). Urban food policies are merely guiding documents to “help the population make informed decisions and adopt healthy and safe diets and responsible and sustainable consumption habits” (City of Madrid 2022, p. 23). The Brussels 2015–2020 strategy solicits support directly: “Can this [sustainable food] vision become a reality? We are convinced of it… and in order to achieve this, we need you!” (2015, p. 8). In these discourses, ambitious goals are metabolized as citizen obligations. Citizens should feel inspired by urban food policies and the changes taking place in the city. “Fortunately, great cities are not limited by their authority to command and control,” says Toronto’s policy. “They also use their capacity to animate and inspire residents” (2010, p. 17). In this way, governmentality acts by encouraging individuals to take responsibility for their food-related actions, which can also be seen as food citizenship obligations.

In terms of articulating the kinds of foods cities want their food systems to provide, all policies (apart from one⁹) reference the importance of promoting “sustainable” food, “healthy” food, and “local” food. In some cases, the city’s ideal food is referred to simply as “good” and bundled with an appeal to a moral sensibility: Wellington’s policy, for example, says that “citizens should be able to “access good food, while supporting the social, environmental, cultural, and economic well-being for future generations” (2022, p. 2). The normative underpinning of “good food” is framed as universal and apolitical. This is compounded by the fact that only five policies (Barcelona, Brussels 2022–2030, Chicago, Melbourne, and Toronto) explicitly define the terms “healthy” and/or “sustainable”. The deployment of these terms without definition suggests that many policies assume their imagined subjects will interpret these terms in the same way.

Overall, the policies articulate visions of food citizenship which emphasize obligations to the state over rights assured by it: only half of the strategies mention access to food as a human right; only four (LA County, Minneapolis, New York, and Toronto) name racism, discrimination, or xenophobia as structural drivers of food insecurity.¹⁰ Policy discourses therefore emphasize obligations (“everyone can do something!”) over rights and equitable political belonging in their visions of food citizenship. In the next subsections, I examine how the obligations associated with food citizenship in these urban food policy discourses relate to immigrant foodways, foodscapes, and labour.

How do urban food policy discourses consider and frame immigrants and their foodways, foodscapes, and food-related labour?

First, I examine how immigrants are referred to generally within the policies, and how their potential needs and challenges vis-à-vis the food system are considered. I then look at specific representations of immigrants across their various roles in the food system (see Fig. 3). To do so, I put these roles and their relationship to food citizenship into conversation with four common goals of urban food policies as identified by Candel (2020): (1) promoting the consumption of “local” food in the city, (2) educating citizens on health and sustainable food, (3) establishing the city as a “food destination”, and (4) promoting community gardening.

Fig. 3

Immigrants across the food systems cycle

Immigrants in urban food policy

At a high level, the positioning of immigrants in urban food policy imaginaries and modes of food citizenship is inconsistent. Despite constituting important population groups, immigrants are not always considered within policy discourse: only 10 policies explicitly mention immigrants and their specific relationships to urban food systems.¹¹ Some policies, like Brussels 2015–2020 and Barcelona’s, refer to multicultural populations, but it is not specified who these populations are. When they are mentioned specifically, immigrants are often defined by how long they have been in the country (as “newcomers” in Toronto’s policy 2010, p. 3), or their immigration status (as “refugees in Melbourne’s policy 2012, p. 8). References to these categories are frequently part of longer lists that name and categorize city residents who are particularly “vulnerable” to food insecurity, likely due to the specific challenges immigrants face vis-à-vis food systems access highlighted in the literature review (City of Melbourne 2012, p. 8; Polasub et al. 2023). LA County’s policy notes barriers to food and nutrition security including limited language skills, poverty, and fearing legal repercussions, which it links, in part, to the needs of hypothetical citizens including “the full-time college student with a full-time job, afraid to ask for help for fear of endangering their undocumented aunt” (2022, p. 9), but few others cities reference challenges faced by immigrants specifically. No policies referred to the specific challenges undocumented immigrants face in accessing food or city food-related services. Additionally, no policies mention the needs of immigrants from an intersectional framework, i.e., how gender, racialization, ability, and other axes of identity can impact one’s engagement with the food system (Hammelman 2018). Aside from brief mentions by Rotterdam’s and Vancouver’s policies, few directly name the cultural, social, or political barriers that can hinder immigrant efforts to participate in key facets of the policy’s vision for the urban food system, like community gardening, buying local, or getting involved in food politics. Several policies (Vancouver, Minneapolis, Toronto, Birmingham) mention including culturally diverse groups in the urban food policy consultations. However, aside from Vancouver’s policy commitment to translating consultation materials into seven different languages, no other policies explicitly acknowledge the barriers to participating in political processes these groups may face.

These omissions have similarities in the way the needs or experiences of immigrants are overlooked in how better food systems are termed and defined. For example, “sustainable” does not have a direct translation in some languages, including Arabic, and both “local” and “healthy” can mean different things to different cultural groups (Brons and Oosterveer 2017; Huang 2020; MacGregor et al. 2019; Minkoff-Zern 2014). In cases where these terms are defined, they highlight whose bodies and subjectivities they are tailored to. For example, the City of Chicago’s policy defines “healthy” foods hegemonically, as foods that follow the American Dietary Guidelines’ food pyramid, including the consumption of “fat-free or low-fat” milk products (2017, p. 4), even though most of the world’s population, particularly people with non-European ancestry and therefore many immigrants to contemporary Global North contexts, cannot digest lactose (Freeman 2013). Sustainable food, meanwhile, is defined by Melbourne’s policy as food “that comes to our plates through short, efficient, and fair supply chains” (2012, p. 27). Here, “short” supply chains (as a synonym for “local food”) are seen as a critical component of sustainability, excluding foods that may come from further away.

Most policies recognize the fact that different cultural groups have different food needs. Just over half (13; mainly those in English-speaking countries) of the policies highlight the importance of ensuring access to food that is “culturally appropriate” (also sometimes referred to as “culturally diverse”, “culturally acceptable”, “culturally preferable”, or “culturally relevant”). As noted by Hammelman and Hayes-Conroy (2015), the term appears to be deployed to refer to food that diverges from the “norm”; in Vancouver’s policy, increasing the number of food hubs is seen to improve access to culturally diverse foods by “increasing opportunity for burgeoning food entrepreneurs, particularly newcomers” (p. 83). Critically, however, only one policy (Zurich) explicitly mentions tensions related to urban food policy goals: namely, that culturally appropriate healthy food may not fit a city’s criteria for food that is sustainable and/or healthy, and vice-versa. In a section titled “Conflicts of objectives and synergies”, it points out that “there is also a demand for foods that we cannot grow… national and international cuisine is part of Zurich’s cultural diversity. A 100% regional supply for all residents of Switzerland is currently not possible” (City of Zurich 2019, p. 42). Neither Zurich’s nor any other policy attempts to describe how food policy goals should be weighted or prioritized.

These high-level findings suggest that immigrant foodscapes and foodways are not emphasized within urban food policies, despite their significant emphasis on citizen obligations and activation. We now turn to how immigrants are specifically un/incorporated into four common urban food policy goals to examine this question in more detail (Candel 2020).

Goal 1: Promoting the consumption of “local” foods in the city

All cities were committed to promoting the consumption of “local” food. Mirroring findings by Smaal et. al. (2021) that cities are using urban food policy to offer incentives and disincentives for certain food activities, many city policies pledge to intervene in procurement regulations or fiscal incentives to boost the volume of local foods sold at cafeterias, hospitals, schools, local businesses, and markets. Madrid, for example, aims to increase “the promotion of the presence of local foods, so that they are recognizable and visible in both commerce and hospitality” (2022, p. 51).

However, “local” food is seldom defined. The reader is left to assume that it means food grown near the city, but in some cases, the concept reveals itself as a cipher for specific cultural projects. Some policies, particularly from European cities¹², highlight the importance of promoting local foods while simultaneously exalting homogenous, “traditional” visions of national or regional foodways. Barcelona claims it wants to “promote the Mediterranean diet as a healthy, sustainable way of eating” (2022, p. 61). Madrid’s policy stipulates that it aims to “favour organic, artisanal and Spanish foods” (2022, p. 10). Brussels 2015–2020 wants “to increase the offering and visibility of Brussels and Belgian products” (2015, p. 19). It is interesting that cities, as semi-autonomous sites of politics with the power to challenge or subvert ethno-nationalist norms through their distinct and cosmopolitan identities, choose to promote nationally defined and white-coded foodways. In some cases, this promotion is justified by the goal of environmental sustainability: London says that a sustainable food system “means the promotion of British, seasonal and field-grown crops that do not need fossil-fuel heated greenhouses” (2018, p. 61). Madrid’s strategy says it encourages the Mediterranean diet as “an example of a culture that respects environmental sustainability” (2022, p. 3); However, no policy further elaborates on what “Belgian”, “British”, “Mediterranean”, or “Spanish” food means to whom. It is assumed that readers and residents will have a coherent understanding of what constitutes these foods, and indeed, that such a concept exists.

While “traditional” foodways are prioritized, no policy addressed challenges related to finding culturally appropriate foods or ingredients, nor the potential to produce more culturally diverse foods close to the city (for example by supporting immigrant farmers, either new or existing, to access land and/or capital). Additionally, no policies acknowledge that “local” foods are often sold in spaces that have historically excluded immigrants, particularly racialized ones, as consumers (Alkon and McCullen 2011; Slocum 2007). In Melbourne, for example, the policy states that “vibrant markets, like the Queen Victoria Market, with its emphasis on fresh Australian produce, are still much-loved features of the city” (2012, p. 7). It does not address how food markets selling higher-cost local food often exclude or marginalize racialized, economically vulnerable groups (Alkon and McCullen 2011; Gibb and Wittman 2013; Huang 2020; Slocum 2007).

Goal 2: Educating citizens on health and sustainable food

All the policies analyzed are preoccupied with educating residents about what constitutes healthy and sustainable food in the city. Many of them highlight educational programs (cooking in schools or community institutions, for example) as one way to reach target populations. For example, Barcelona’s policy commits to “foster the organisation of courses on healthy, sustainable and safe cuisine in municipal facilities in all city neighbourhoods, adapted to cultural diversity, aimed at a variety of age groups and socio-economic profiles” (2022, p. 37). While Barcelona’s policy, joined by Chicago’s, mentions the need for culturally appropriate pedagogy, it was also in Barcelona’s strategy that the city pledged to promote a Mediterranean diet as an “ideal” way of eating (p.61). Other policy discourses also call for centring ethno-national (i.e., white) norms in foodways. “The existence of a recognized “French-style” gastronomy and informed Parisian consumers are strengths in developing a good nutritional culture,” says the Mayor of Paris’ strategy (2022, p. 57); the City of Lyon’s policy lumps together the goals of “improv[ing] the food know-how of residents and promot[ing] culinary heritage Lyonnais” (2019, p. 29)¹³.

Several policies refer to the need for educational programming and cast a wide net around particular communities that may include immigrants, on the basis that they lack access to food or knowledge of food, and as a result experience higher burdens of diet-related disease. In this way, immigrant foodscapes and foodways are stigmatized and rendered problematic within the urban food imaginary. “Numerous studies have shown that obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses are concentrated in lower-income neighbourhoods and among minority populations, in particular African-American and Latino communities,” declares Chicago’s policy (2017, p. 10). Here, the policy refers to what can be interpreted as racialized non-immigrant and immigrant populations. The City of Rotterdam, the city in the Netherlands with the second-highest share of residents born outside the country, says in its policy that “the average Rotterdammer has worse health than the average Dutch person” (2012, p. 13). Poor health is also discursively linked to a lack of knowledge about or consumption of healthy and sustainable food. Some policies specifically highlight neighbourhoods with significant immigrant populations, even if this fact is not specified in the discourse. For example, the City of Copenhagen’s policy asserts: “Life expectancy rates are seven years shorter in the district of Nørrebro than in the city centre. Eating habits and diets are contributory factors to this” (2022, p. 5). It is not stated in the policy, but the official website of Visit Copenhagen says that “as Copenhagen’s most culturally diverse neighbourhood, this [Nørrebro] is…the place to go for the best shawarma you’ve ever had” (Visit Copenhagen, n.d.). Paris’ policy notes that:

The disparities between the wealthiest and most informed Parisian residents, sensitive to institutional messages, and the most precarious residents are increasing. The obesity rate for CE2 [primary] students in priority Parisian neighbourhoods is 5.5%, while it is 2.7% on average for these children in Paris. Food education messages aimed at the general public thus show their limits and must adapt to the multiplicity of Parisian situations and the diversity of Parisians’ cultural food preferences. (2022, p. 57)

The discursive link between wealth and knowledge, as well as the vague reference to Paris’ priority neighbourhoods and their cultural food preferences, suggest that the city may be targeting racialized and/or immigrant communities for change. Meanwhile, the structural drivers of poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition are not addressed, and conversely, the existing knowledge held by immigrants about food is scantly referenced. Only two policies explicitly mention how immigrants and their food practices can positively contribute knowledge and share skills related to healthy and sustainable food in Global North contexts. Toronto’s policy notes that immigrants want to “preserve their healthful food knowledge and practices” (2010, p. 3); it commits one of its government departments to expand opportunities for knowledge sharing. Vancouver’s strategy highlights the knowledge held by different cultures on edible plants. Across all policies, the focus is on educating residents rather than tapping into existing multicultural knowledge.

Goal 3: Establishing the city as a desirable (and multicultural) “food destination”

Six cities had food policies that highlighted the goal of being seen as desirable “food destinations”. To do so, they frequently evoked the city’s pride in being home to multicultural food traditions. Toronto’s policy emphasizes that “food is also becoming central to how residents and the outside world see Toronto…diversity will be a defining characteristic of Toronto in the 21st century and the city has food to match” (2010, p. 3). It’s a sentiment echoed by the Birmingham City Council, whose policy wants to “develop Birmingham as a food destination with a flourishing, vibrant, diverse food scene that celebrates the cultural diversity of the city” (2022, p. 48). Melbourne and London’s policies make nearly identical statements. These calls indicate that multicultural food traditions fostered by immigrants in Global North cities are seen as a boon for cities’ reputations as tourist destinations and liveable cities.

While these visions appear to recognize the essentiality of immigrant-owned and/or -staffed businesses to the types of “cosmopolitan” food cultures that demarcate the modern, liberal city, the policies overwhelmingly do not recognize or challenge the precarity of the immigrant food-related labour that sustains them (Joassart-Marcelli 2021). As exceptions, New York City and Barcelona’s policies do recognize that many jobs in the agri-food sector are performed by immigrants and that these are often poorly paid. The City of New York’s policy also highlights that “the restaurant industry is also vital to the city as a major draw for residents, workers, and visitors, underpinning many other industries such as office employment in the central business districts…” (2022, p. 48). These two separate points underscore the importance of precarious immigrant labour to a thriving urban food culture that in turn props up the city’s economy.

However, the fact that so few other policies mention immigrant foodscapes suggests that policy discourse largely separates multicultural food cultures from the subjects who carry and reproduce them. As mentioned in the analysis of the first goal related to local food, this championing of diverse food cultures is seldom accompanied by concrete proposals to integrate immigrant producers and businesses into shorter supply chains. While cities like Milan and Birmingham pledge to financially incentivize businesses to increase their sourcing of local food, no policies explicitly address the importance of connecting immigrant farmers or business owners with these benefits. There is no mention of zoning or other protections which could shore up immigrant food businesses in the face of rising rent costs or development pressures.

Finally, while some policies like New York’s recognize the importance of the food sector to immigrant employment and capital accumulation, others go a step further in discursively ringfencing immigrants into food-related work. Rotterdam’s policy mentions that it sees “great opportunities in mobilizing the entrepreneurship and knowledge of the city’s multicultural population” (2012, p. 17) towards productive urban agriculture. The policy specifies this approach “distinguishes Rotterdam from other Dutch cities that often focus on the highly educated population” (2012, p. 17). Whether or not the contrast was deliberate, "multicultural" populations (a category sure to include immigrants given their significant presence in Rotterdam) are positioned as separate and distinct from “highly educated” ones, despite their purported agricultural knowledge.

Goal 4: Promoting community gardening

At least 13 cities sampled in this project have policies which aim to promote community gardening (as opposed to market-oriented urban agriculture) in the city. Community gardening relates to immigrants as social actors in specific ways. Some urban immigrants come from agrarian traditions, and urban gardening allows them to utilize well-honed skills and share valuable knowledge related to growing food; regardless of their agricultural background, it also allows them to form relationships within their local communities (Diekmann et al. 2018; Goralnik et al. 2023; Guo et al. 2022; Minkoff-Zern et al. 2023). Furthermore, urban gardening enables immigrants to grow culturally appropriate produce unavailable at commercial outlets, resulting in food that is not only nutritious as a commodity but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually nourishing across the entire cycle of producing it (Diekmann et al. 2018). At the same time, immigrants face specific barriers to accessing community gardens. These include a potential lack of confidence with the languages needed to navigate these spaces, and in cities where they are not located close by, finding transportation to reach these places (Park and Yi 2023; Polasub et al. 2023).

Few policies recognize these challenges. Vancouver’s policy explicitly references the importance of supporting “ethno-cultural groups” (groups which can include non-immigrants) to find garden plots (2013, p. 54). Both Vancouver’s and Minneapolis’ policies highlight the importance of raising awareness of food spaces like gardens in multiple languages, and Vancouver’s policy emphasizes the inter-cultural exchange and enhanced social capital that community gardens facilitate. Otherwise, references to immigrants and community gardens seem to reify stereotypes of immigrant communities. In Rotterdam, where immigrants make up a significant share of the population and many of them are racialized and/or low-income (Migration Policy Institute 2021), the policy seems to suggest community gardens as an individualized response to food insecurity, claiming that “by starting to grow vegetables themselves, city residents with low incomes can also eat healthier at low costs” (2012, p. 13). This follows an approach to food planning that insists “the benefits of urban agriculture are so compelling that everyone will want it” when in reality, it is often foisted by on racialized communities regardless of their desires (Moragues-Faus et al. 2022, p. 120). Rotterdam’s policy also references immigrants in relation to urban agriculture specifically. In an earlier section in the policy about urban agriculture in city parks, Rotterdam’s strategy states that “immigrants in particular rarely attend recreational areas outside of the city” (2012, p. 7). Because there is no additional qualification on what point this information is intended to convey, it is left to the reader to interpret whether the city aims to understand and reduce barriers that immigrants face to accessing urban green spaces or instead activate tropes of immigrant communities as vulnerable or “difficult to reach”, and either uninterested in or uninformed about environmental sustainability (MacGregor et al. 2019; Zickgraf et al. 2024).

Discussion

Urban food policy discourses constitute “sustainable food imaginaries” that outline the future of food in a city (Birnbaum and Lütke 2023; Jhagroe 2019; Moragues-Faus and Marsden 2017). As a form of food governmentality (Jhagroe 2019), urban food policies articulate visions of food citizenship by proposing ideal food-subject relations. Food citizenship is theoretically about rights, obligations, and belonging (Gómez-Benito and Lozano 2014; Jhagroe 2019; Lozano-Cabedo and Gómez-Benito 2017). My analysis finds that urban food policies frequently encourage citizen engagement with the food system (obligations) but largely avoid addressing the structural and social barriers to doing so (a failure to secure rights). In some cases, policies frame immigrants as problematic and/or ignore their essential role in sustainable food systems. This raises questions about how immigrants can be considered to belong to political food communities – e.g., considered as food citizens in the eyes of those projecting the sustainable food imaginary. I now expand on each dimension of food citizenship in turn.

We begin with obligations: what food citizens are required to do to bring urban food policies to life. This analysis makes visible what urban food policies take for granted in the city. Urban food policies mostly seem to assume equal opportunities for producers to integrate into local supply chains and for consumers to adjust their behaviours, cheerily shopping at farmer’s markets and turning the soil at community gardens. Immigrant foodways and foodscapes are largely marginalized in these imaginaries. Despite goals related to shortening supply chains, no cities explicitly attempt to plan how more culturally appropriate foods can be grown or produced close to the city. Additionally, cities almost uniformly fail to specify how the immigrant farmers, workers, and business owners who power urban foodscapes and economies would be integrated into newly local supply chains. This is a symbolic omission with material consequences, given the financial rewards that many cities pledge to put on the table.

Additionally, many policies imbue the concept of “good” food with normative meaning (e.g., “local”, “healthy”, and “sustainable”), suggesting that food citizens should mobilize themselves to produce and consume food in line with homogenous societal values. These values may, at first blush, appear neutral. However, this illusion evaporates when we consider how European urban food policies promote vaguely defined “traditional” (i.e., white) national foodways. We see similar exclusions with health discourse promoted by North American policies like Chicago’s, where foods that cannot be digested by most immigrant populations are promoted as healthy and essential (Freeman 2013). Urban food citizenship therefore requires obligations that, for immigrants, may be culturally inappropriate and/or biologically inaccessible.

Meanwhile, the near-ubiquitous rhetoric of championing local foods risks framing culturally appropriate foods sourced from further distances as undesirable, or even dangerous. The risk of deprioritizing or stigmatizing the often-evoked “culturally appropriate” component of sustainable food is enabled by the fact that as a term, it immediately evokes deviance from the norm. Studies on migration and belonging have noted how people racialized as white often perceive themselves as people who make decisions unrelated to culture (Volpp 2000). That the term “culturally appropriate” is used frequently in policy discourse as a synonym for “ethnic” foods tacitly suggests that only certain groups have “culturally”-driven food preferences. In actuality, dietary choices in dominant Euro-Anglo foodways (for example, high levels of meat consumption) are also cultural.

Echoing findings by Smaal et al. (2021), few policies mention a rights-based approach to overcoming the barriers immigrants face to engaging with the food system. Structural drivers of poverty, food insecurity, and political exclusion are scantly mentioned despite serving as the criteria for who gets to define and participate in sustainable urban food systems. If barriers to participation go unmentioned, immigrants who fail to engage with the imaginaries that policy lays out will be assumed to have done so due to individual moral or educational failings (Joassart-Marcelli 2021). The decentring of rights allows sustainable food interventions to appear politically neutral and accessible to all, despite the highly normative and exclusive frames of obligations they deploy.

If cities, like the Brussels 2015–2020 strategy claims, want to create “a new food culture” (2015, p.12), “belonging” as a food citizen is key to accessing the symbolic and material benefits that may be associated with it. Many policies seem to tacitly assert that immigrants — as they are, as they work, as they eat — do not belong to a sustainable food community. Many policies do not mention immigrants at all; this erasure can have material consequences, as can discourse that identifies immigrants only as part of “vulnerable” groups. As this study has highlighted, immigrants do have specific needs and vulnerabilities related to the food system; however, they also hold valuable knowledge about food and play a key role in shaping urban foodscapes and in turn powering urban food economies. Yet few policies mention how immigrants can be encouraged and supported to share this knowledge and skills. Some bypass the issue of immigrant agency entirely by assuming that immigrants will make good urban agriculturalists and indeed, want to engage in that type of work. Belonging is further jeopardized in policies that directly or indirectly target immigrant communities for intervention under the assumption that they are unhealthy, in need of food education, or reticent to use green space. Some policies instrumentalize immigrant foodscapes as validators of cosmopolitan identities. In this sense, immigrants belong to the imaginary to the extent that they benefit affluent groups in the city, but not on their own terms as workers and consumers. When not accompanied by a stronger focus on social justice or discussion of bringing immigrants further into food policy processes, policy dynamics reveal whose agencies may be invisible in — or even perceived as problematic to — the imaginary.

We can therefore see how immigrants may be denied consideration as “food citizens” in the eyes of municipal and potentially even civil society actors who intend to fund and support urban food systems change. Food citizenship is a symbolic status that can be claimed, and certainly, immigrants are agentic actors who are not “passively waiting to be included” in food systems change (Brons et al. 2020, p. 1038). However, when the emblems of legitimation in question are material benefits emanating from the state, food citizenship must also be granted.

Conclusion

This research has attempted to theorize a conceptual framework of urban food policy and food citizenship for immigrant communities through a critical discourse analysis of 22 urban food policies from the Global North. It gestures towards several exciting areas for further research. First, a full evaluation of the links between food citizenship and cultural citizenship, a broader concept used in citizenship studies to denote full cultural and social belonging in society (Beaman 2016; Delanty 2002; Langhout and Fernández 2016; Silverstein 2005; Volpp 2000) would help further theorize how “culture”, used as a proxy for ethnicity or race, inflects the potential of racialized immigrants to secure political belonging through food. Second, research on the implementation of urban food policies would provide critical insight into how these policies have impacted immigrant lives on the ground. Finally, this paper invites analyses of how immigrants are included in the policy development process and what impact on policy discourse this may have. As writes Minkoff-Zern (2014): “Solutions [in sustainable food systems] must revolve around them [immigrants] as leaders and actors in the system, rather than simply those that are acted upon” (p.1201). Indeed, this will be essential if cities are to work towards food citizenship for all.