Abstract
This article examines the foodways in Mexico's migrant detention centres, demonstrating how the weaponisation of food, prevalent in carceral settings, combined with the institutionalised precariousness characteristic of this context, produces distinct forms of oppression and resistance. Drawing on the narratives of 41 migrants who experienced detention in Mexico, four interrelated dynamics are analysed: (i) punitive commensality, (ii) non-compliant food empires, (iii) a minimal-fuelling approach, and (iv) gastronomical resistance. Ultimately, the analysis reveals foodways in these detention centres as mechanisms of physical, emotional, and symbolic punishment, as well as sites of migrants’ everyday agency and resistance.
Introduction
The documentary film Casa en Tierra Ajena (2016) – one of the few, if not the only, visual testimonies from inside Mexican migrant detention centres – offers a powerful glimpse into the infrastructure and foodways of the Saltillo facility in Coahuila. Between minutes 49:26 and 49:45, following a scene that shows food being delivered on disposable plates and cups and accompanied by a small bag of tortillas, a group of six migrant men is shown sitting and eating, huddled around what appears to be a wooden picnic table. One of them, with a choked laugh, remarks: ‘Because you came today, they are giving us this to eat’; the comment is echoed by another, who says: ‘It is good this food because there are cameras. Usually, we only eat beans here’. ‘Yes, black beans’, confirms the first migrant, again with a chuckle.
Nothing about foodways in migrant detention is arbitrary; what detainees eat, how and where they eat it, and under what circumstances they eat it, and even – as the documentary shows – how these practices are represented. Migrant detention foodways are a highly regulated area, yet in practice, non-compliance and unaccountability are the norm. While deprivation of food and water is identified as a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and even torture, migrants’ testimonies indicate that it as a common practice. So if, as Van der Berghe (1984: 387) stresses, drawing on Lévi-Strauss, ‘Food, and what we do to and with it, is at the very core of sociality’, what, then, can the foodways of migrant detention centres reveal about our society and the ways in which migrants are regarded within it?
Migrant detention centres function as total institutions, where environments are tightly controlled and detainees are stripped of multiple forms of autonomy, including food autonomy. Conceptualising these spaces through Goffman's (2017) concept of ‘total institutions’, as other scholars have also done (Bull et al., 2013; Kronick et al., 2018), underscores their resemblance to resocialisation institutions. This framing helps us to understand ‘outcomes such as trauma and mental illness not as failures of immigration detention systems, but as some of their core functions’ (Peterie, 2018: 281). Moreover, emphasising the similarity between the conditions and practices of migrant detention centres and those of prisons echoes the growing body of scholarship that problematise the crimmigration approach to migration governance across various contexts (Menjívar et al., 2018; Stumpf, 2006; Van der Woude et al., 2014).
Inside migrant detention centres, ordinary rituals, such as eating, take on heightened symbolic significance. Within these carceral spaces, the symbolic dimension of food as a marker of alterity is both materialised and instrumentalised. ‘Because of the restrictive detention conditions’, Vanhounche (2022) notes, ‘food may harbour a much more pressing significance in prison than it is outside’ (p. 4). Food – or, more precisely, its lack or inadequacy – has been highlighted as a mechanism of punishment (Boochani, 2019; Bosworth, 2023; Godderis, 2006; Sexton, 2015; Sykes, 1958; Ugelvik, 2011), to the extent that, as Smith (2002: 202) observes, ‘in prison food assumes enormous importance, symbolically representing, in many respects, the prison experience’. Accordingly, foodways are adapted and transformed in accordance with the goals and principles of carceral settings (Chatterjee and Chatterjee, 2018).
Yet, despite offering a unique opportunity to examine how contempt, punishment, and otherness are reproduced and embodied on daily basis, foodways in migrant detention have received relatively little scholarly attention. Few studies have analysed how food is provided, controlled, and instrumentalised in these carceral spaces (Campos-Delgado and Vega, 2025; Carney, 2013; Peterie, 2022). This article contributes to this debate by examining the case of Mexico, which has ‘one of the world's largest immigration detention infrastructure’ (Global Detention Project, 2021) and yet operates through a political economy of scarcity (Campos-Delgado and Côté-Boucher, 2024). Drawing on migrants’ narratives of detention in Mexico, this article demonstrates that the well-theorised dynamics of oppression and resistance through food also apply to migrant detention centres, while revealing how Mexico's specific geopolitical and institutional context gives these dynamics distinctive characteristics.
The article begins by outlining the context of Mexico as a carceral country and the food insecurity experienced by migrants due to their categorisation as irregular. This is followed by a discussion of methodological considerations related to the empirical data analysed. The final section develops four key aspects that underpin Mexico's migrant detention foodways: (i) punitive commensality, (ii) non-compliant food empires, (iii) minimal-fuelling approach, and (iv) gastronomical resistance. These aspects illuminate how foodways in migrant detention function both as mechanism to discipline and punish detained migrants and as sites through which migrants identify, navigate, and resist such state-led efforts.
Mexico as a carceral country
The Mexican Transit Control Regime, in operation since 2001, aims to intercept, detain, and deter migration in transit to the United States. This regime forms part of what Hiemstra (2019) terms ‘the elasticisation of the US southern border’ whereby US border control priorities shape policymaking and law enforcement across the Americas. Over the long history of this regime, various episodes have demonstrated the interconnectedness of the US migration control agenda and Mexico's migration policy, sometimes subtly and other times more openly. For example, in 2014, during the so-called crisis of unaccompanied minors at the US southern border, Mexico implemented Plan Frontera Sur, which ‘focused on the disruption of traditional migrant routes and transportation methods and the installation of new interior checkpoints’ (Rosenblum, 2015: 18). Similarly, in 2019, amid the arrival of migrant caravans and under the economic threats of US President Trump, Mexico signed the US-Mexico Joint Declaration, which established that ‘Mexico will take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, to include the deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border’ (US Department of State, 2019).
In practice, this regime has turned Mexico into a ‘border-country’ (Yrizar Barbosa, 2011). Over the past two decades, Mexico has transformed its migration enforcement practices to minimise the chances of success for migrants fleeing their countries of origin in search of protection and better livelihoods in the United States (Vogt, 2020; WOLA, 2014). Historically, the regime has been consistently oriented towards the interception and expulsion of population from Central America, primarily from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. However, in recent years, environmental crises and political turmoil worldwide have led to a diversification of the populations using this migratory corridor, including an increasing presence of people from the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and Asia. Consequently, official responses to these varied populations have become increasingly discrepant and discretionary, manifesting, for example, in an unequal implementation of the expulsion mechanism (Campos-Delgado, 2021b).
Mexico's role as a border-country is reflected in its high number of migrant apprehensions. Between 2014 and 2024, Mexican authorities apprehended approximately 3.5 million migrants, with 2024 marking a historic peak of 986,314, following an upward trend observed since 2021. Statistical data indicate that the population apprehended by Mexican authorities has consistently been composed primarily of adult males, who accounted for 75% of the total in 2024. However, it should be noted that, particularly since 2014, there has been an increasing presence of family units and unaccompanied minors among those experiencing Mexico as border-country (Silva Hernández, 2015; Vargas, 2025). These apprehensions are also linked to the widespread strategy of entrapment in the southern region of the country (Odgers-Ortiz, 2024). For instance, in 2024, 85% of all apprehensions were concentrated mainly in the southern states of Chiapas and Tabasco (Unidad de Política Migratoria, 2024).
Through this regime, Mexico has become a carceral country. By 2017, 31 of the 32 Mexican states had at least one detention facility, with some states operating more than three. These facilities are concentrated heavily in the southern region of the country. This detention infrastructure comprises three types of facilities, Migration Stations, Provisional Stations A, and Provisional Stations B, Estaciones Migratorias, Estancias Provisionales A and Estancias Provisionales B. Their main distinction lies in the legally permitted maximum length of stay: 60 days, 48 hours, and 7 days, respectively. Although these maximum detention periods are often violated – particularly in provisional stations – they nonetheless shape key material aspects, such as reception capacity and the material and human resources available for the attention of detainees (Campos-Delgado, 2021a).
Drafted through the prism of humanitarianism, the laws and regulations governing Mexico's migrant detention centres state that ‘the unrestricted respect for the human rights of foreigners must be observed’ (DOF, 2012). In particular, Articles 106 and 107 of the Migration Act (DOF, 2011) explicitly prohibit overcrowding and establish the obligation of the Mexican State to provide food, medical services, psychological and legal assistance, safeguard the physical integrity of detainees, promote the right to family unity and provide spaces for sports and cultural recreation. However, the reality enforced by Mexico's Nacional Migration Institute (Instituto Nacional de Migración, INM) falls far short of these precepts. The INM operates within a political economy of scarcity, reflected in its underpaid and exploited precarious workforce (Campos-Delgado and Côté-Boucher, 2024), limited basic supplies (Carte, 2017), and inadequate infrastructure (Insyde, 2013).
Detained migrants are subjected to conditions that amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. While in the custody of the Mexican state, migrants face overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, inadequate lighting and ventilation, and unsafe practices such as padlocked cells and the absence of emergency procedures, as well as prison-like practices including solitary confinement (Campos-Delgado, 2021a; CCINM, 2017; CNDH, 2019; Díaz de León, 2023; Fernández De La Reguera, 2022; Yrizar Barbosa et al., 2022). Recently, the Grupo Impulsor contra la Detención Migratoria y la Tortura (GICDMT, 2023: 66) reported that 80.7% of interviewees experienced disruptions to basic physiological functions; specifically, 70% were subjected to hunger, 30% to thirst, and 50% faced restrictions on urination or defecation. It is therefore unsurprising that scholars have concluded that ‘the Mexican migration detention system of the estaciones migratorias creates torturing environments’ (Manek et al., 2022: 12).
Irregularised migrants’ food insecurity
Because Mexico is both a border-country and a carceral country, migrants attempting to circumvent this restrictive regime are pushed into precarious, vulnerable conditions of mobility, and inevitably face food insecurity. The lack of reliable food and water constitutes the defining markers of the irregularised migration experience. Migrants are recurrently affected by gastric problems and parasitic disorders due to food shortages or consumption of contaminated food (MSF, 2017). In addition, the lack of food poses an increased risk for migrants travelling on the freight train, as weakness makes them more likely to suffer accidents (Ruiz, 2001). Indeed, levels of food insecurity among irregularised migrants in transit meet global thresholds for classification as a food crisis (Aragón Gama et al., 2020; Deschak et al., 2022).
Given this, food solidarity along the route is vital and takes on a deeply symbolic significance. Among migrants, this solidarity manifest as mutual support and care, whether through sharing food supplies (Bojórquez et al., 2024) or pooling responsibility for acquiring food (Aragón Gama et al., 2020). Moreover, food solidarity is expressed either through spontaneous responses by local populations (Porraz Gómez, 2020) or via organised civil society, which for more than two decades has mobilised to mitigate the vulnerability of migrants (Olayo-Méndez et al., 2014). In practical terms, migrant shelters (casas del migrante) and soup kitchens (comedores) – ‘refugios contra el hambre’, as Hayden (2023) aptly describe them – are vital for migrants’ survival. It is therefore unsurprising that, amid global migration-related moral crises (Cantat et al., 2023), these solidarity initiatives have gained prominence. For instance, it is highly significant that Las Patronas, a group of women who provide food to Central American migrants crossing through their community, are considered a ‘national and international civil icon of care, protection, and solidarity within the context of international migration’ (Arteaga-Botello, 2020: 192). Hence, in the extremely precarious conditions experienced by migrants transiting through Mexico, food and food solidarity ultimately becomes a mobile common of migration.
Yet, just as food can convey unity and communality, it can also be used to signal exclusion and otherness (Parasecoli, 2022). In the context of Mexico, where the regime of control ambiguously – if not psychotically – conveys notions of welcome and exclusion (Campos-Delgado, 2024), the possibility of mobilising the symbolic dimension of food to mark otherness and exclusion is particularly pronounced. An illustrative example occurred in 2018, amid the migrant caravans, the government's precarious temporary sheltering response in Tijuana, and the accompanying media frenzy (del Monte Madrigal, 2023), when a Honduran woman – while initially acknowledging that ‘it's not required that they feed us’ – expressed displeasure with the food provided. Her complaint about frijoles molidos (mashed beans), which she equated to food for pigs, went viral and sparked a social media hate campaign under the hashtag #Ladyfrijoles. The backlash quickly transcended the individual case, revealing broader narratives of racism, aporophobia, and discrimination against all irregularised migrants in Mexico (Frank-Vitale and Núñez Chaim, 2020; Pérez Díaz and Aguilar Pérez, 2021).
This viral vilification reflects the expectation that migrants must display boundless gratitude, an expectation often entwined with the sociopolitical construction of migrant vulnerability and the mobilisation of such notions to assess their ‘deservingness’, with food serving as a medium to communicate these moral judgements (Campos-Delgado and Vega, 2025). At the same time, this episode highlights an often-downplayed reality, obscured by the idealised discourse of Latin American ‘fraternity’: culinary traditions across the Americas are far from homogeneous. While certain ingredients are common across the region, their forms and preparations vary greatly between countries, and even between regions within the same country. For instance, although corn is a fundamental ingredient in Latin American cuisine, it is prepared in culturally specific forms, such as tortillas, arepas, tamales or pupusas, which are not interchangeable. Similarly, beans – native to the Mesoamerican region and considered a staple in many Latin American gastronomy – are not prepared or consumed in a uniform way across the region, dishes such as frijoles puercos and baleadas reflect distinct culinary traditions and cannot be equated.
This culinary dissonance brings us back to the opening scene of this article: Spanish-speaking migrants in a Mexican detention centre noting the difference between the ‘good food’ served when cameras were present and the usual black beans. This moment highlights, as examined in detail below, not only dissatisfaction with the quality and type of food, but also a deeper frustration with the lack of cultural sensitivity in food provision – an issue echoed in detainees’ accounts from other carceral settings (Canning, 2020). In the following sections, after outlining the methodological considerations of this research, the analysis of foodways in Mexico's migrant detention centres will be presented, highlighting how food provision is weaponised not merely as a form of physical punishment, but primarily as an emotional and symbolic one, as well as how migrants perceive and respond to such state-led punishment.
Methods
To examine and problematise the foodways in Mexico's migrant detention centres, this article draws on testimonies from irregularised migrants. These testimonies were collected in the framework of three research projects investigating migration control in Mexico. 1 Specifically, the analysis is based on 41 semi-structured interviews with irregularised migrants over the age of 18: 22 from Honduras, 18 from El Salvador, and 1 from Guatemala, all of whom had experienced detention in Mexico. Interviews were conducted in 2017 in El Salvador and in 2019 and 2022 in Mexico. At the time of their interviews, participants in Mexico (n = 24) were in transit and staying at a non-governmental, faith-based shelter located in the Bajio region. Participants interviewed in San Salvador, El Salvador (n = 17), were contacted in two locations: (i) the Migrant Reception Centre, a government facility for so-called ‘returnees’ and (ii) a local non-governmental organisation supporting Salvadorean migrant population. Participants were not formally or administratively ‘held’ in these spaces, rather they were seeking or receiving shelter and immediate support.
All participation was informed and voluntary. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 54, with an average age of 30. Most participants were male, five were female, and two identified as gender diverse. Their detention experiences spanned 2017 to 2021 in centres including Tapachula, Tenosique, Palenque, Acayucan, San Luis Potosí, Mexico City, Coatzacoalcos, Piedras Negras, Saltillo, Villahermosa, and Reynosa. Interviews were conducted and analysed in Spanish. To protect anonymity, only nationality, age and gender were recorded. All names used here are pseudonyms chosen by the author.
The analysis of the interviews focused directly on excerpts related with food provision in detention centres. Coding was conducted using a combination of inductive and deductive codes in ATLAS.ti. The first cycle of coding included descriptive, affective and emotional coding. In the second cycle of coding, patterns of frequency and correspondence were identified, which lead to the creation of three thematic groups: (i) infrastructure, including codes related to the description of physical infrastructure and conditions of food provision, (ii) embodiment, including codes capturing sensations, flavours and emotional responses to food provision and (iii) resistance, including codes referring to complaints, refusal and demands related to food and its provision.
The analysis of migrants’ testimonies is contextualised against the stipulations of Mexico's migration laws and regulations. The section ‘Non-compliant food empires’ draws on archival information regarding contracts for the provision of food in migrant stations, obtained from Mexico's National Transparency Portal and referred in the text as INM-Transparencia. Finally, this discussion is also informed by monitoring reports on the protection of migrants’ human rights and on detention conditions in Mexico.
Foodways in Mexico's migrant detention centres
It is well established that in carceral settings, ‘eating choices and preferences are restricted and the bodily experience of eating becomes mediated and controlled’ (Smith, 2002: 202). Yet foodways in Mexico's migration detention centres impose even greater constraints on detainees’ dietary autonomy than many other carceral institutions. In contrast, some other migration detention systems provide detainees with limited opportunities to exercise some dietary control. For example, detainees in the UK Immigration Removal Centres are occasionally allowed to cook meals of their choice (Asylum Information Database, 2025); in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, they may purchase food items from commissary stores (Conlon and Hiemstra, 2014); and in Australia, many have family or community members nearby who can bring them complementary food (Peterie, 2022). Such possibilities are largely absent in Mexico. This absence stems from the relative short average length of detention in the Mexican system, both in practice and in law, though exceptions are increasingly frequent (Yrizar Barbosa et al., 2022).
In Mexico, detained migrants are disciplined and punished through the precariousness of food consumption practices. Although this precariousness reflects the scarcity model underpinning migration control in Mexico, it should not be understood as a mere structural limitation, rather, as discussed elsewhere (Campos-Delgado, 2021a), it represents an intentional failure and a core function of the regime. This article argues that in Mexico, as in other carceral settings, the provision of food is weaponised to reinforce notions of exclusion and otherness. When this weaponisation intersects with entrenched institutionalised precariousness, the dynamics of oppression and resistance acquire distinctive characteristics. This article identifies four: (i) punitive commensality, (ii) non-compliant food empires, (iii) minimal-fuelling approach, and (iv) gastronomical resistance.
Punitive commensality
In Mexico's migrant detention centres, eating unfolds within a framework of punitive commensality. Migrants eat together in deplorable, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions (CCINM, 2017; GICDMT, 2023). Although Mexico maintains that migrant detention is administrative rather than criminal, the conditions of punishment – produced by design, neglect and indifference – are starkly expressed in how food is provided to detainees (de Graaf and Kilty, 2016; Smoyer and Lopes, 2017). That is, if, as Maurice Bloch (1999: 133) reminds us, ‘commensality, the action of eating together, is one of the most powerful operations of the social process’, then the conditions shaping detainees’ commensality must be understood in the terms of the social operations they serve. In this context, commensality becomes a tool for exclusion. The conditions structuring detainees’ commensality are not merely logistical failures, but deliberate mechanisms of othering and embodied punishment.
According to the rules governing detention centres in Mexico (DOF, 2012), detainees must be provided free of charge with drinking water and three meals during their ‘stay’. As set out in the timetable describing activities permitted for detainees, 2-hour blocks are allocated for meals: breakfast between 8:30 and 10:00, lunch between 14:00 and 16:00, and dinner between 18:30 and 20:30. After breakfast and lunch, 2-hour blocks are allocated for receiving visitors, making calls, and participating in sports, recreational and cultural activities. However, ‘after 21:00 alojados [detainees] shall not be allowed to remain outside the dormitories’ (DOF, 2012: 2). Yet, as examined below, this timetable – along with numerous INM regulations (CNDH, 2019) – is rarely upheld in practice. In reality, implementation varies depending on infrastructure and staffing of each detention centre.
The way in which the rules of operation are presented suggests that meals are served outside the cells, but this is only the case in a few centres. In the larger centres – Mexico City, Acayucan and Tapachula – migrants leave their cells during the day, and meals are provided in a designated area. In smaller detention centres and temporary facilities, however, meals are provided inside the cells. For instance, Jorge recalled that in Acayucan he was allowed to leave his cell and eat meals in the patio, whereas in the Piedras Negras – Provisional Station A – where he was detained for 3 days, he was never allowed out, and food was served inside his cramped cell: ‘There they only keep you locked up, they don’t take you out at all. They food is served there, locked up, and it's very complicated because it's a small cell. There's a bathroom, showers and sanitary facilities, but it's very small and they throw people in until there's no more room for anything’. (Jorge, 2019) ‘Everyone has their meals on their hand [on their lap], everyone on their bed, […] a queue forms inside the cell, and they hand out a lunch box, a disposable one. There you get the food, a piece of bread, a sandwich, and that's it, a juice. Se sufre, [you suffer], it's like being a prisoner’. (Antonio, 2022)
Non-compliant food empires
As an outsourced service, food provision in migrant detention centres forms part of the broader ‘migration industrial complex’ (Doty and Wheatley, 2013). Alongside the punitive and dehumanising approach to food provision, a multi-million-peso industry profits from feeding detained migrants. For example, in 2021, when Mexican authorities intercepted 307,679 migrants, the INM signed 33 contracts with private providers for the ‘Food service for migrants presented at the migration station and/or temporary stays’, totalling MX$ 346 million pesos (INM-Transparencia, 2021). Two years later, when the number of migrants apprehended reached 778,907, the INM signed 4 contracts for the provision of food, totalling MX$ 814 million pesos (INM-Transparencia, 2023). This ‘food empire’ surrounding migrant detention, and the inadequacy of the food provided, has drawn attention from investigative journalists as well as the INM's Internal Control Body (Piña, 2023; Villa y Caña, 2023).
According to the contract and technical annex, food provided by INM contractors must ‘satisfy the characteristics of a balanced diet’ and be ‘adequate and sufficient’ (INM-Transparencia, 2021). Menus are required to be varied but must include five components: (i) animal protein-based stew, (ii) vegetable or legume side dishes, (iii) drink, (iv) a piece of bread or unrestricted number of tortillas, and (v) dessert. The annex is so detailed that it even specifies that ‘two napkins per each meal must be provided’. All of this to ‘comply with the polices and norms established by the Institute of safeguarding the human rights of the presented [presentados] and specifically of providing hygienic and sufficient food to them’ (INM-Transparencia, 2021).
Furthermore, the ‘food law’ governing these services (Locchi, 2021) stipulates that menus ‘should take into account the different nationalities and diversity of food and religious practices, mainly of the countries of Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize, Costa Rica, and even Panama and other nationalities different than the Central American’ (INM-Transparencia, 2021). This requirement not only reveals the regime's orientation towards detaining certain nationalities but also underscores the impossibility of creating a single compliance blueprint for Mexico's detention foodways. Compliance with this standard would require not only global culinary awareness but also an exercise of culinary syncretism to accommodate the diverse food traditions of detainees. To offer a glimpse of this diversity, in 2023, 29% of the migrants detained were from Venezuela, followed by individuals from Honduras (15%), Guatemala (10%), Ecuador (9%), and Haiti (6%). However, the detained population also included migrants far beyond the Americas and the Caribbean, for example, Mexican authorities detained individuals from 44 African countries and 41 from Asia, further illustrating the complexity of this mandate.
Unsurprisingly, monitoring reports show a stark contrast with the contractual commitments described above. They highlight problems ranging from monotonous menus to tasteless or spoiled food. Unlike the infrastructure dimension where reports vary, there is overwhelming agreement on the poor quality of food across all detention centres. For example, in Puebla and Tlaxcala, detainees denounced the ‘cold, tasteless, sour food’ provided (Yrizar Barbosa et al., 2022: 27). Similarly, detainees in Chetumal ‘said that the food was scarce, inadequate (as they were given the same food every day) and that on many occasions it was spoiled, since the authorities did not take sufficient care in its handling. In addition, they said that the water provided to them for consumption had a strong smell of putrefaction or, in some cases, of disinfectant’. (CMDPDH, 2023: 9)
Contract provisions explicitly state that ‘food that does not comply with the organoleptic qualities (smell, colour, taste, consistency, temperature and presentation) must be returned to the suppliers’ (INM-Transparencia, 2023). Yet, in practice, these organoleptic qualities are rarely met. Expressing revulsion mixed with resentment at the memory of the episodes, Vicente stated: ‘The food is no good, sometimes it is stale, spoiled, comida ruina’ (Vicente, 2017). The memory of the food in the detention centre evoked a similar response of disgust in Mario: ‘They give us a chicken with vegetables, what they say are vegetables, a chicken with carrots, like a horrible parboiled chicken, the three meals they gave us that. We all were with fucking stomach-ache, you can’t imagine, it even makes me want to vomit’. (Mario, 2017) ‘They gave us rice, only once a week they gave us meat chops, eggs, and beans. Often you could see that the beans were spoiled; when you put in your spoon, they were like nopal slime. They gave us leftovers, sometimes two days old, just stirred up and served again’. (Hugo, 2022)
Minimal-fuelling approach
Food provision in carceral settings is always a negotiation between the minimal and the adequate sustenance for detainees. As Chatterjee and Chatterjee (2018: 41) note, ‘inmates are not to be kept hungry as that would be violation of the right to food, which is seen as part of right to life. But, food should also not be gratifying for them as that would impinge upon the very idea of punishment’.
Migrants are deprived of food autonomy, the ability to decide when, where, and how much to eat. With no access to purchase their own goods, they cannot compensate for the insufficient food provided. Expressing visible frustration, Celso explained: ‘You just take what they give, how much they give… whatever they want to give, and that's it. (Q: If you’re thirsty during the day?) No, you have to wait for the next meal’ (Celso, 2022). Furthermore, as Lucio's description highlights, migrants’ food experience is deeply shaped by the emotional response to the imprisonment, ‘Yes, they gave us food three times a day. Sometimes we weren’t very full, but we weren’t hungry either. And yes, sometimes they varied it, they didn’t give us the same food’ (Lucio, 2022).
Detained migrants are acutely aware of the food biopolitics in these carceral settings. A recurrent concern among them is the addition of iodine to food (Yrizar Barbosa et al., 2022). ‘They include iodine in the food, in the jelly’, Fernanda explained when recounting her experience in the San Luis Potosí. After noticing a ‘strange’ taste, she asked other detainees, who confirmed it was iodine, and the purported reason: to reduce their sexual appetite (Fernanda, 2022). Interestingly, in recent years, there have been media reports of this ‘hidden tactic’ in Central American prisons, particularly in El Salvador. This association is significant as it illustrates that migrants perceive and experience detention in Mexico as a prison-like environment where control extends to their bodies, even their sexual desire. It reveals migrants’ awareness of being framed as bodies requiring discipline and moral containment, as well as a form of what can be called ‘information conviviality’, where migrants despite lacking a strong bonds, share information and foster solidarity – an aspect that has proven to be crucial not only inside detention centres but also outside them (Díaz de León, 2022; Papadopoulos and Tsianos, 2013). The iodine rumour also highlights a key aspect of migrants’ interaction with the apparatus of control: suspicion is not one-way. Just as the state views migrants through a securitising lens, migrants are suspicious of the state and the intentions of its agents.
Gastronomical resistance
Migrants are not passive victims of punitive commensality or the dehumanising practices it entails (Díaz de León, 2023). They use food ‘as a locus of resistance and solidarity’ (Esposito et al., 2024: 396), engaging in gastronomical resistance, that is, ‘consumptive practices that aim to disrupt/interrupt the use of state food as a form of nutritional punishment’ (Hatch, 2019: 77). They confront the state by expressing dissatisfaction, refusing food or demanding better provisions. However, as can be expected, this resistance is not well received by agents responsible for maintaining ‘harmonious coexistence’ in migrant detention centres (DOF, 2012). In expressing his dissatisfaction with the food, Mario recounted the following exchange with an officer: ‘The officer said we should be grateful for food and a place to eat, “I didn’t ask you to come here”, he said. And I told him, “You know what, if you have a problem, if you don’t want to keep me here, let me go, I’ll pay for a hotel outside and sleep peacefully, I didn’t ask you to stop me and lock me up here either”’. (Mario, 2017)
Most often, migrants express discontent non-verbally, simply by refusing to eat what they are served. Julieta, for example, who experienced detention with her daughters aged one and five, recounted how she rejected the food she was given. Although the lack of differentiation between the food provided to children and adults has been identified as a regular problem (CMDPDH, 2023; SPT, 2016), her daughters did eat, as they were given a special menu: ‘they gave us the same food every day, I didn’t eat, only them [daughters], because they give her [one-year-old] cereals, and to her [five-year-old] flour broths [calditos de harina, de algo]’ (Julieta, 2017). With limited avenues for gastronomic resistance – unlike in other contexts where detainees can cook, add spices or purchase food items – refusal becomes a powerful form of protest. By rejecting food, migrants are able to express displeasure and disobedience, reaffirming the centrality of food in detainee resistance (Earle and Phillips, 2012; Peterie, 2022; Ugelvik, 2011).
By deciding whether or not to eat what is served, migrants actively challenge the regime, assert their agency, reclaim their taste in food, and even, as the following narratives show, exercise control over their health. ‘The food was stale, not good’, Vicente told me, before explaining, ‘We only drank the juices because one of us got sick. They gave us oranges and guavas that were already chucas [spoiled]’ (Vicente, 2017). Similarly, Hugo, seeing that other detainees were falling ill because of the food, decided to reduce his own intake to avoid being sick himself: ‘Most [migrants] got stomach aches, and I was barely eating’ (Hugo, 2022). The experiences of Vicente and Hugo show that migrants identify food in detention centres as a risk to their wellbeing and, therefore, reject it in order to protect themselves. Moreover, these accounts illustrate a manifestation of the ‘necropolitics of uncare’ (Inda, 2020): the prevalence of gastroenteritis in these carceral settings, where dozens of migrants share a single bathroom, cells are overcrowded, and hygiene is poor.
At times, migrants’ discontent escalates into collective protests. Pablo, for example, recounted a protest organised by detainees in the dining room of the Tapachula detention centre, where migrants refused to eat the provided food (Pablo, 2017). Similarly, Hugo described an episode in which the migrants collectively expressed their dissatisfaction to a person they identified as high-ranking in the institution – ‘el mero jefe de los oficiales’; ‘That day the chief came, the food was bad. The food stank, it was the worst’, Hugo recalled. ‘He came to a table and asked: “Are the beans good?” We said: “no” […] “this food is ordinaria [bad]”. Even in front of him, I threw it away’ (Hugo, 2022). In such cases, authorities often act to de-escalate protests and prevent news from spreading beyond the facility walls. However, food-related protests sometimes escalate. For example, on 15 June 2021, approximately 500 migrants in Tapachula protested over the lack of clarity in their migration processes, inadequate access to shelter and the provision of spoiled food (COMDHSE, 2021). Similarly, the fire at the migrant detention centre in Ciudad Juárez on 27 March 2023, which resulted in 40 deaths and 27 serious injuries, reportedly began as a protest against overcrowded conditions, inadequate food, and water shortages (FJEDD/IMUMI/Asylum Access México, 2024).
The official response to these protests varies. In Hermosillo, for example, authorities attempt to repress collective protests by using food as a form of punishment, either by withholding it or by delivering it ‘late and frozen, or even incomplete, or with obvious signs that it had been manipulated, scrambled or tasted by other people’ (CMDPDH, 2023: 15), thereby reinforcing the argument of the weaponisation of food provision. In other cases, such as in the protest of the 500 migrants in Tapachula, the authorities’ response amounted to torture: ‘the men were taken to the courtyard of the Migration Station, some were beaten and all of them were forced to lie on their backs with their hands on the back of their necks, a position in which they remained from approximately 2pm to midnight, under the sun and in the rain, forbidden to close their eyes, under threat of being beaten if they did so’. (COMDHSE, 2021: 1)
Conclusions
As in other carceral spaces, foodways in migrant detention centres are governed by strict rules dictating when, where, how, and how much should be eaten. Ultimately, these foodways manifest state power on the bodies of migrants. The examination of the foodways in Mexico's migrant detention centres reveals how detainees’ eating practices are shaped by the centres’ nature as total institutions. The analysis demonstrates that food provision functions simultaneously as a tool of punishment, contempt and exclusion, and as a site of resistance.
Although regulations required balanced and adequate meals, the reality is marked by non-compliance and lack of oversight. As a result, migrants face food scarcity, sensory punishment, and even health risks. Thus, in addition to the many forms of violence that irregularised migrants endure on their journeys, once in the custody of the Mexican state they also endure food trauma. Yet food also becomes a vehicle for migrants to challenge these practices. By voicing dissatisfaction, refusing meals or demanding more food, migrants engage in everyday forms of resistance. In doing so, they assert agency, reclaim taste and even exercise control over their health.
So, to return to the question, what can foodways in migrant detention centres tell us about our society, and how migrants are regarded within in? The foodways in Mexico's migrant detention centres reveal the country's systemic, long-standing reliance on dehumanising and punitive approaches to migration management, making visible the material and symbolic violence inherent in its migration regime. They reveal the gap between regulation and reality, between the rhetoric of protecting migrants’ human rights and the implementation of those rights, and they underscore how appallingly low the benchmark remains for what is considered ‘adequate’ treatment of irregularised migrants in Mexico.
Footnotes
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Mexico's National Council of Science and Technology (grant 382433); the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education (grants 2014-BC2891 and 2015-BC4180); the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen's University Belfast (Postgraduate Research Travel Grants 2015-2018); the International Centre for Comparative Criminology, Université de Montréal (postdoctoral fellowship 2019); and Leiden University (postdoctoral fellowship 2020-2022).
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.