The acculturation of immigrants through grocery shopping experiences

Abstract

This study investigates how immigrants’ grocery shopping experience impacts their acculturation. While immigrant grocery shops facilitate socio-economic integration and represent the pursuit of identity projects that reconnect immigrants to aspects of their past through the offering of ethnic food products and services, they are also embedded with different meanings, emotions, and cultural systems that can shape acculturation beyond the home culture–host culture dichotomy. Our findings, based on interviews and observations of first-generation immigrants to Norway, show how immigrant grocery shops serve as multicultural environments that contribute to acculturation strategies and bear multiple meanings such as cultural knowledge, nostalgia, and a sense of belonging. We conclude by discussing how our findings contribute to understanding the dynamics of the acculturation process of immigrant consumers.