'A little bit of rice, a little bit of fish curry': food practices of Malayali nurses in Brisbane, Australia

The need for skilled workers in the education, health and IT sectors in Australia has seen an unprecedented increase in the numbers of migrants from South India to various Australian cities since the early 2000s. As a means of understanding change and continuity for migrants, in this chapter we discuss the distinct food practices and cultural identity of a group of six nurses from Kerala and their families now living in Brisbane, based upon interviews and ethnographic research. This group of nurses has a number of very distinct characteristics. Their social networks are based, not around the larger Kerala community in Brisbane, but with fellow nurses and their families who choose to migrate together, making their migration journey unique and distinct from that of other migrants from Kerala. Their mainly female-driven migration has taken this group, from the places they were trained in India to countries of the Middle East, and then to the UK and finally to Australia over a period of ten-fifteen years. Although they are usually the primary income earners, these women continue to retain traditional gender roles and relations, including the responsibility for family food provisioning. They negotiate everyday food practices that are consistent with maintaining their Malayali traditions and identity in this unique social network context. The food practices of Malayali nurses and their families illustrate the transnational diasporic spaces that contemporary migrants inhabit, which are informed and shaped, not so much by dietary acculturation, as by transnationalism and globalisation and the desire to maintain tradition while dealing with change. These processes enable these Malayali migrants to maintain their own identity in terms of culinary tradition and food practices while living in another cultural environment.