Place, Health and Home: Gender and Migration in the Constitution of Healthy Space

This paper contributes to recent literature that considers the role of everyday activity in constructing 'healthy space', specifically exploring the tension between agency and structural processes in explanation. The focus is a comparison of two groups of migrant women in British Columbia, Canada: South Asian Sikhs from Punjab, India, and Afghan-Muslim refugees. It explores the routine practices whereby they work to create 'healthy space' as they orchestrate their families' health. Through food preparation and consumption practices, traditional healing and religious observance, the women delineate the physical, social and symbolic dimensions of healthy space. The women's narratives demonstrate the productive capacity of everyday routines in forging healthy space within the particularities of migrant settlement.