Abstract
ABSTRACT Within the Iranian-American community in rural Kentucky, pre-migratory ideas and practices from the homeland play crucial roles in community formation. They use their compromised pre-migratory identities, middle-class achievements, and adherence to local norms to create a community composed of cultural citizens. Drawing upon their upwardly mobile middle-class status, my interlocutors challenged local racialization dynamics while adopting local norms that emphasized the importance of faith, church, and community. Through negotiations of their contested past cultural citizenships, they were able to create unique forms of claiming U.S. cultural citizenship, which enabled them to build a unified and harmonious diasporic community. The Iranian case compels us to consider how a full spectrum of factors, including educational and professional achievement, social class, local norms, the homeland contested identities, national politics, and local community-building initiatives, interplay in shaping the endeavours of Muslims to combat racialization and achieve cultural citizenship within American society.
Published Version
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