A migrant is defined as somebody who crosses frontiers in the hope of a better future, hoping to better satisfy his physical needs, and running away from food shortage.
Nothing will be the same, in spite of the efforts to preserve the ties with the past, with its places, its time scale, it's realities and imagination. As the tradition cult evolves, the area of food becomes loaded with symbolic aspects which go beyond its nutritional values.
When food traditions are transplanted abroad they are adapted and mixed up with other traditions, and they loose their strong identity. These changes seem to reflect our planet's current fragility and they cast doubt on the ways of life that we are passing on to the future.
European mass migration of the XIX century exported labour in search of better work conditions. It also spread knowledge, practices, foods and flavours. Certain products, like pasta and pizza, became national symbols.
In order to better explore these dynamics with reference to current issues I am going to describe an area which I've explored, with the help of archive databases. It is the mining basin of Southern Luxemburg near France and Belgium which I studied in connection with the massive Italian immigration of the XIX century