Iranian Diaspora Research Articles

Speculative Heritage: Architectural Imagination as a Gateway to Alternative Futures for Iranians at Home and in the Diaspora

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the Azadi Tower, a prominent gate structure in Tehran, to discuss how an authoritarian monument has the potential to become a shared space of public discourse, both physically and visually. In so doing, it opens up a discussion of the construction of spatial imaginaries as a category of cultural heritage, specifically in geographies of conflict. Initially named Shahyad, the tower and the square around it were built in 1971 as a monument to the Shah. Despite the controversial genesis of the structure, it was given new meanings after the 1979 revolution and renamed Azadi (freedom) Tower. This article considers the centrality of the structure in the visual materials expressing dissent in the recent years in Iran and across the Iranian diaspora, and addresses the various stages of physical and visual re-invention of the structure since the 1979 revolution to comprehend its role as a speculative solidarity monument in contemporary Iran. In this sense, architectural heritage opens up new possibilities not just through its lived experiences, but also its yet-to-be-lived subjective imaginaries.

Reporting from the Outside While Looking In: Iranian Diaspora Journalists and #WomanLifeFreedom

Following the death of twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini, tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets in Iran—and the whole world watched through their screens. Several Iranian diaspora journalists stepped up to cover the events in Iran for western news outlets. In this study, we interviewed fourteen Iranian diaspora journalists on how they define their role when reporting on Iran and how they navigate the balance between their personal experience and their reporting. Implications for this study include journalistic expectations for international news coverage and the role of the diaspora journalist within that coverage.

Vicarious death: Grief, politics, and identity after the flight PS752 tragedy.

In January 2020, Ukrainian Flight PS752 was shot down shortly after take-off from Tehran's IKA airport, killing all 176 passengers, the majority of whom were headed to Canada via connecting flights. In the aftermath of the tragedy, many among the Iranian diaspora in Canada, ourselves included, were stricken by an unexpectedly deep sense of shock and sorrow, to the point that some experienced what we term as "vicarious death." Drawing on 49 in-depth interviews with the Iranian diaspora in Edmonton, this study explores questions about how being an immigrant, being far from "Home," and being a member of a racialized group might shape and deepen the experience of collective grief and how, conversely, collective grief might influence the meaning of "Home" and bring into question one's ethno-national self-identity. Our results present a multi-dimensional, sociological understanding of grief as a collective, rather than individualistic, experience and highlight the complexity and depth of emotional experiences among immigrants.

Moving to find home: Emotion, imagination, and onward migration in the Iranian diaspora

Recent years have seen a growing number of studies on onward migration and specifically the motivations international migrants may have for leaving their first country of settlement. Many of these studies argue that onward migration occurs as migrants pursue opportunities to study, work and reunite with family members in different places. So far little research has been undertaken to understand how affect, emotion and imaginings of home also contribute to onward migration decision-making. This study aims to fill this lacuna in the research by focusing on the case of diasporic Iranians who initially moved to Sweden as refugees in the 1980s and 1990s, stayed for at least five years and then subsequently made the decision to move on to other parts of the Iranian diaspora. The findings of the study illustrate that the participants’ onward migration decisions may be related to their emotional encounters with places over time, and their evolving imaginings of what constitutes ideal homes in diasporic space. The study draws on rich material collected through multiple life history narrative interviews conducted with Swedish-Iranian migrants currently living in London, UK and Toronto, Canada.

Digital Feminist Placemaking: The Case of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement

Throughout Iran and various countries, the recent calls of the “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” (in Persian), “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (in Kurdish), or “Woman, Life, Freedom” (in English) movement call for change to acknowledge the importance of women. While these feminist protests and demonstrations have been met with brutality, systematic oppression, and internet blackouts within Iran, they have captured significant social media attention and coverage outside the country, especially among the Iranian diaspora and various international organizations. This article, grounded in feminist urban theories of the Global South, analyzes the digital feminist placemaking movement in Iran. As the first counter-revolution led by women, the movement utilizes digital art, graffiti, and protest movements to embody women’s solidarity groups and sympathy rallies. Our analysis employs various digital research methods, including social media scrutiny and the study of protest illustrations. Analyzing the digital feminist placemaking in Iran will enable us to compare the commonalities, differences, challenges, and opportunities between the minorities and majorities in the world’s countries. The outcomes of this research can help international organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations Agency for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN Women), as well as policymakers, institutions, academics, and NGOs, to highlight the various ways in which broader public participation could be encouraged in the process of digital feminist insurgent placemaking.

A dialogical appraisal of diasporic women’s work to impact change in Iran

How do women in the Iranian diaspora contribute to change in their homeland? Drawing on narrative accounts from activists and advocates, this paper offers insight into whether and how change occurs in relation to diasporic initiatives. The results highlight women’s perceived success in public education and awareness-raising activities that focus on procedural, discursive and legislative change. At the same time, despite enjoying freedom in the diaspora, diasporic women continue to face operational constraints like those in the homeland and must minimise risk. The findings are timely given the feminist uprisings that have engulfed Iran in 2022–2023, the coherence of which rests upon the patient and persistent work of those that have come before. This research holds significance for practitioners in diasporic communities, and researchers interested in agents and drivers of change in repressive operating environments.

Woman, Life, Freedom: The Adlerian Conceptualization of the Woman-Led Revolution Against Tyranny in Iran

ABSTRACT: Adler was among the first feminists who opposed Freud’s views on the inferiority of women. He argued that it was society, not nature, which had hindered women’s affinity for Social Interest and that this oppression could be overcome through movements for social justice. He believed that women held the capacity and resilience to fight for themselves against gender-based tyranny. One such fundamental tyranny is against women’s bodily autonomy through the enforcement of strict dress codes, especially in autocratic countries such as Iran. The tyranny of the compulsory hijab in Iran is used to describe the mandatory dress code imposed on women, which involves covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting garments that conceal their bodies. This dress code, referred to as hijab , has been enforced since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In September 2022, the murder of the Iranian woman Mahsa Amini for her supposed improper observance of hijab ignited the worldwide Woman, Life, Freedom movement. This movement calls for the preservation of women’s rights and a shift to secular democracy in Iran. Adlerian art therapy workshops inspired by this movement were held in Vancouver, Canada, to promote resilience and social justice in the Iranian diaspora. These workshops successfully echoed the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and encouraged ally-ship and advocacy for women.

Politics of Vengeance in Iranian Diaspora Communities

The death of the young Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, on September 16, 2022 following her arrest by Iran's now-suspended Gasht-i Irshad (guidance patrol or morality police) for apparent lax conformity to the Islamic dress code ignited protests across Iran. The protests, known as Women, Life, Freedom (Zan, Zendegī, Azadi) quickly spread to Iranian diaspora communities across North America, Europe, and Australia. Initially, diasporic Iranians organized their protests to support and amplify their compatriots’ calls for justice. As the protests continued in Iran and the demands for change grew louder, some members of the Iranian diaspora shifted their focus from the Islamic Republic to the public shaming of Iranians living outside Iran for their purported support of the Iranian regime. Some of the tactics employed by those engaged in public humiliations of suspected regime supporters recalled Gasht-i Irshad's methods of trapping and accosting individuals for perceived infractions. These public confrontations were aimed at isolating, shaming, and silencing perceived allies of the Islamic Republic and, by extension, denouncing the regime for its abrogation of women's and human rights. I refer to this phenomenon among diasporic Iranians as gasht-i intiqām, roving avengers, which reflects a frustration with the absence of justice in Iran and targets purported proxies for the regime. There have been many instances and types of denunciations aimed at silencing and ostracizing individuals, academics, and institutions. As Daniel Block points out in his analysis, “The attacks overwhelmingly target women, most notably in North America and Europe. The victims include gender equality activists, journalists, foreign policy analysts and a historian, each of whom has been accused of colluding with the authoritarian Islamist regime in Tehran.” Block further points out that many of the attacks are anonymous or originate from fake social media accounts. The common denominator he finds among those who target individuals is opposition to “Western-Iranian diplomacy or reporting information that adds subtlety to the debate over how the United States and its allies should handle the Islamic Republic.”1 Often those deemed regime collaborators are Iranian American individuals, journalists, or institutions that supported the 2015 the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the nuclear deal.

Discord in the Diaspora: Agonism in the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement for Democracy

The death of the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Jina Amini in September 2022 sparked a movement that immediately captivated the Iranian diaspora around the world. The morality police had detained Amini in Tehran for allegedly improper hijab. Protests began in Iranian Kurdistan, where Amini was from, and spread across the country to regions and sectors of society that have historically been less involved in political protests than major urban centers like Tehran. What began as a street protest became a full-throated rejection of the status quo. Merchants, teachers, and students organized coordinated labor strikes, while protesters and security services clashed in the streets. Additional economic sanctions were implemented against Iran's government by the United States and Europe; the United Nations Human Rights Commission initiated an independent investigation of the government's response to the protests; Iran was expelled from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women; and the European Parliament cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. The United States has nearly abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) even as it was in the final stages of renegotiation, while calls by activists and the European Parliament to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist group are ongoing.1 We also saw significant global solidarity protests in numerous major cities in the United States, Europe, and Australia.

An Investigation into the Relationship between Diaspora and Identity with Reference to the Iranian Diaspora

Abstract The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between diaspora and identity with reference to the Iranian diaspora as a case study. Although there has been a recent growth in the study of ideational factors and their effects on sociopolitical issues, identity remains understudied within the mainstream literature on diaspora studies, international relations (IR) and foreign policy analysis (FPA). The aim is to challenge the purely realist and power-based explanations that have dominated the discourse by introducing the notion of identity and exploring it in relation to the Iranian diaspora. The paper’s novel approach lies in its categorisation of Iranian diaspora identity into three main components: nationalist (ancient Iran) tendencies, religious (Islamic-Shiite) tendencies and secular (Western) tendencies. The identity components of Iranians abroad and their interaction with the homeland are relatively comparable to those of their compatriots at home, showing intersecting areas of commonality and difference.

Virtual mourning, the experiences of iranian diaspora during Covid-19

Virtual mourning, the experiences of iranian diaspora during Covid-19

Dismantling Hospitality - Literary Representations of EU Asylum Policy in Dina Nayeri’s Refuge

When we refer to nation-states receiving refugees as “host” countries, we necessarily evoke notions of hospitality, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers with liberality and goodwill.” Yet the exploration of the impact of contemporary EU asylum policy in Dina Nayeri’s 2017 novel Refuge portrays a system far removed from such adjectives. Based heavily on Nayeri’s own autobiography, and hitherto underrepresented in academic research, the award-winning work portrays the journey of an Iranian refugee in Europe to make sense of her migrant identity, informed by her encounters with fellow members of the Iranian diaspora in the Netherlands. Through the friendships Nayeri’s protagonist forms, a vivid fictional representation is conjured of the damaging human impacts of policy areas such as the EU’s Dublin Regulation, referenced and rephrased in the context of the novel. Drawing from Mireille Rosello, this paper proposes a comparative reading of the legal and fictional texts, as analysed through the prism of host/guest relationships. It seeks to demonstrate the capacity of fiction to give voice to the victims of policy failures, as well to provide an affect-based accompaniment to legislation which by nature excludes the emotive language necessary to comprehensively capturing human experience. Ultimately, it explores how Nayeri’s novel calls into question the very relevance of the language of hospitality used in reference to contemporary European asylum policy.

Opinion manipulation on Farsi Twitter

For Iranians and the Iranian diaspora, the Farsi Twittersphere provides an important alternative to state media and an outlet for political discourse. But this understudied online space has become an opinion manipulation battleground, with diverse actors using inauthentic accounts to advance their goals and shape online narratives. Examining trending discussions crossing social cleavages in Iran, we explore how the dynamics of opinion manipulation differ across diverse issue areas. Our analysis suggests that opinion manipulation by inauthentic accounts is more prevalent in divisive political discussions than non-divisive or apolitical discussions. We show how Twitter’s network structures help to reinforce the content propagated by clusters of inauthentic accounts in divisive political discussions. Analyzing both the content and structure of online discussions in the Iranian Twittersphere, this work contributes to a growing body of literature exploring the dynamics of online opinion manipulation, while improving our understanding of how information is controlled in the digital age.

Sister Tongue by Farnaz Fatemi

Reviewed by: Sister Tongue by Farnaz Fatemi Taylor Nasim Stone FARNAZ FATEMI Sister Tongue Kent, Ohio. Kent State University Press. 2022. 77 pages. IN HER DEBUT verse collection, Farnaz Fatemi skillfully explores the nuanced between-life of Farsi and English and how that negative space houses language, displacement, longing, and the materiality of memory. Being a member of the Iranian diaspora and growing up in Southern California, Fatemi finds that there "is no word for [belonging] in any of [her] tongues" and straddles what it means to have a plurality of identities—including a twin sister. This inability to capture belonging does not stop her from writing gorgeous poetry that brings an unexpected understanding to those hyphenated identities and creating a sense of kinship across language(s). Fatemi crafts a lyric essay to be the backbone for her book that bears its namesake, Sister Tongue and extends to the reader an honest invitation to accompany her toward self-reconciliation: "I am trying to explain what it feels like to have not come from a place and to have come from the very same place." Fleshing out the spine of this work are numerous smaller poems hemmed into four categories: I Name the Eight Muscles of My Tongue, The Only Mistranslation, The Word for Heart, and Unveiling. These four acts allow the reader to get their bearings within Fatemi's journey of self and travels in Iran while moving through it with her in the shape-shifting tone of wisdom, whimsy, and all the emotions we can't place the words for. My first introduction to this collection was at a reading hosted at San Francisco State University's Poetry Center, where Fatemi herself read a curation of excerpts. Hearing the poetry read aloud before ever seeing the words carefully arranged on each page, tears fell from my eyes by the end of her poem "Untranslated." From my perspective, this is the heartbeat of the collection: All the womenWho disappeared into the silence inside me, I pull from the roar of the past.I make introductions. By which I mean, I want the foreigner in meto meet the foreigner in me. In this way, Fatemi expands on the borderless lives of ourselves and our ancestors though we feel the distance of generations pulling within us. From the onset of her collection, something in me perked up for more, and I was not disappointed. My journey within the diaspora looks vastly different from Fatemi's, so I was not prepared for her to pen the hurts and nuances of my soul, leaving me to feel known and welcomed. This celebration of honoring roots, as a poem and a collection of poems, creates a treasury of understanding and introduction within the Iranian diaspora as a culture. Truthfully, though, no matter your own journey, vulnerability is delivered in such delicate craft that your own heart tightens with nostalgia. Taylor Nasim Stone San Francisco State University Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Representing Post-Revolutionary Iran

During more than the last four decades, Iran has been one of the main interest areas not only in global political and strategic agenda but also in the cultural sphere as well. Most of those interests focus on analyzing the domestic and economic situation in addition to the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic. However, one observes a lack of studies analyzing the Iranian diaspora and their culture, lifestyles, and feelings in a comparative way. One such book was published a couple of months ago and authored by Hossein Nazari, an assistant professor from the University of Tehran: Representing Post-Revolutionary Iran. In his book, Nazari elaborates on a very interesting and less-studied phenomenon: which individual or socio-cultural factors and motivations drive the Iranian-American diaspora women toward authoring “memoirs” discussing the situation in the post-revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran?

Did a flower grow in hell? Reading the modern history of Iran through the nonviolent participation of women in political struggles

Did a flower grow in hell? Reading the modern history of Iran through the nonviolent participation of women in political struggles

Cuisines of Diaspora: Expressions of Iranian Foodways & Culinary Traditions

The project "Cuisines of Diaspora" was a community-based research inquiry that aimed to expose the status quo of Iranian culinary culture within the decades-strong Iranian diaspora in the North Shore area of Vancouver, BC, Canada. Using a qualitative and interpretive approach with a case study methodology, the research employed multiple tools using semistructured interviews, market observations, photovoice samples, and city archives, as well as other interactions with community members and stakeholders. Nineteen interview responses were obtained alongside a magnitude of data through secondary research findings. The findings suggest a lack of regional Iranian cuisine representation in the North Shore and a thirst for a more diverse offering that reflect the various Iranian provinces. Furthermore, the findings illustrate the growth in dining entertainment options including artistic cultural representations through song, dance, and other art forms. Other findings suggest a strong sense of gastrodiplomacy by the Iranian community, which supports advocacy and promotion of Iranian cuisine. Finally, there is an appetite for more community events that highlight Iranian culture and cuisine and a potential for preserving food culture through community partnerships and sustainable sourcing of food ingredients.

How Good Governance (GG) Affects Diaspora Motivations for Remittances to Iran

Abstract In this study, we examined different models for the motivation of the Iranian diaspora to send remittances to Iran, with and without governance indicators, to analyse the impact of economic factors and governance indicators on remittances. The results based on the generalised method of moments (GMM) method show that the income level of the origin and host country had positive and significant effects on the diasporas’ motivation for remittances to Iran. Also, Iran’s real exchange rate has a negative impact on remittances, whereas the interest rate differential is positive. The results confirm that the quality of governance and its indicators are essential factors for remittances. Overall, the macroeconomic conditions, along with good governance in Iran, have influenced remittances. Between investment and altruistic motives, altruism has been the primary motivation of remittances due to the lack of good economic and governance conditions in Iran during the years under review.

Power, Belonging, and Respectability

Power, Belonging, and Respectability

بررسی تاریخی ناجنبش کوییر ایرانی

This article applies critical discourse analysis and content analysis as a method of data analysis to queer discourses from Iran over the last three decades. "Orthodox discourse" and "heterodox discourse” are studied from historical, ontological, epistemological, and executive perspectives. The author also uses the model of historical sociology. The first part of the article addresses a theoretical study of the concepts of movement and non-movement. In the second part of the article an overview of the history of pre-modern sexuality and modernization in Iran is presented. In the third part of the article, while narrating the historical events after the 1979 revolution, the author examines the gradual formation of an orthodox discourse in the field of Iranian sexuality, first in the Iranian diaspora, and then in relation to domestic activists. The final section of the article provides an overview of heterodox discourse as a critical discourse in this area.