Audio: From Europe with Love: Missy Flynn

Taken from our From Europe with Love series

Audio Transcription:

I’m Missy Flynn, I’m 31 years old and I live in London. I work in the food industry and last year I started a Masters in The Anthropology of Food at SOAS.

At the moment writing I’m writing an essay about migrants and migratory foodways and the way people kind of stay connected to their homes and their memories through food and also thinking about this in context of Brexit and what the F is happening with Brexit and all the implications I think are laid out for us in the media, and you know, we talk about them in the pub over a drink or in a more serious setting perhaps. But there’s something so simple about what stands to be lost and I think it is about community and sharing and access to food and the memories that come with it and for us in Great Britain and in hospitality we are built on a migrant workforce. It’s true to say that most kitchens are staffed with workers that are not from the UK as is front of house and I think what is the most scary thing to me about telling these people that we don’t want them here is first of all the alienation that that kind of puts on them, but also the way that we alienate ourselves by being in that position by not having all these influences and these shared experiences and the influx of amazing produce and products and ways of using them that have come to shape the way that we think about food in the UK.

I mean, British food is European food and I’m so scared at the fact that that might be lost. So as I’m writing this essay, I’m thinking about ways that we can maintain some sense of visceral, sort of, link to the way that we eat and the way that we source food and the way that we prepare food but also the way that we share food and being someone the restaurant industry it’s in my interest that people go out to eat. But I think perhaps now more than ever is a time stay at home and to cook and to share experiences that are from the heart and mean something.