Food influences the ways through which migrants relate to space and make home. Through the structuring of a culinary competence, they make sense of new situa-tions, between memories and adjustments to new food grammars. The hereby ar-ticle weaves together the voices of asylum seekers, refugees, and social workers, offering an interdisciplinary discussion of the food practices within a number of extraordinary reception centers (CAS) and former-SPRAR apartments within the alpine and pre-alpine space of the Cuneo valleys and the Lecco province. Such discussion aims at analyzing the extent to which diverse spaces generate different uses of the "food suitcase" and the extent to which the newcomers agentively elaborate creative solutions to homemaking and social interaction.
Keywords: asylum seekers; food; proximity relationships; homemaking; food grammar; agency.