The integration of immigrants in the EU is one of today's key social issues. Researchers from the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Zagreb have conducted a study to provide an overview of successful attempts to foster the socio-economic, cultural and interactive integration of refugees and asylum seekers into the Croatian society. 

Authors describe the extent to which participation, i.e. the preparation of food, enables refugees to exist in a transnational field. They also indicate the two diametrically opposed ways in which Croatian citizens accept asylees involved in such initiatives: from friendliness to distance.

The research is based on interviews with refugees and asylum seekers, media discourse analysis, as well as observations of participants in cooking workshops and food presentations, notably in the framework of the Taste of Home project. This initiative has been featured as good practice on the European Web Site on Integration and selected in SOLIDAR's top 17 innovative and sustainable projects for social inclusion.