Iranian Refugees Research Articles

“Compatriot” or “Stateless”: Iranian State-Owned Media and Social Media Depictions of Iranian Refugee Kimia Alizadeh’s Match at the Tokyo Olympic Games

The only Iranian woman to ever win an Olympic medal, Taekwondo Athlete Kimia Alizadeh, immigrated to Germany and became a refugee participant for the 2020/2021 Tokyo Games, competing against her former compatriot, teammate, and friend. This study content analyzes four Iranian media sources as they rendered the story of a former national hero-turned-refugee. A total of 15 frame categories were applied to each of the media sources: (a) Twitter (n = 5,662), (b) television (n = 103), (c) radio (n = 117), and (d) newspapers/digital-native news (n = 119). Television was found to adopt the most critical tones of Alizadeh, with social media, newspapers, and radio offering assessments that ranged from neutral to positive. Interestingly, social media and newspaper frames were significantly correlated, while other media sources were not.

Media and representation of others. Case of Iran in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Media and representation of others. Case of Iran in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Understanding Iranian Refugee Discourse in Turkey on Twitter by Using Social Network Analysis

The problem of asylum seekers is still a major concern worldwide, including for the transiting countries like Turkey, which hosted more than 4 million asylum seekers in its territory. The main question is, how long is this going to continue? To answer that question, understanding what Iranian asylum seekers want is also very important, in order to define a long-term solution. Based on the data analysis in the paper, most of the refugees who have already settled in Turkey for more than 3 years, mostly want to join the programme of resettlement to several refugee recipient countries, such as Canada and the European Union (EU), conducted by the UNHCR. However, there are some obstacles for them to successfully be admitted in the resettlement programme. First, the acceptance rate is very low, under 5% yearly, and the required processing time is sometimes more than five years. The proposed solution is to open access to education for Iranian refugees and implement the EU Blue Card for the refugees and asylum seekers to resettle them voluntarily to EU territory. Hopefully, that legal solution can become a long-term solution for Iranian asylum seekers and refugees who are to this day still struggling in the Turkish territory.

Durable Displacement and the Protracted Search for Solutions: Promising Programs and Strategies

In March 2022, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) released a request for papers (RFP) for a special issue of its Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS), devoted to identifying solutions to situations of protracted displacement. The co-editors selected 10 papers for this special issue by authors from a dozen countries, including two refugees. The papers cover several large populations in protracted displacement, as well as other less-publicized groups. The former include: Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh; Internally displaced persons (IDPs) living on the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan; Afghans in Pakistan since the 1970s; Syrians in Turkey since 2011; Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni, Sudanese, Somali, and Iranian refugees in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon; IDPs and Venezuelan migrants in Colombia; Somali refugees in Ethiopia and Kenya; Central Americans seeking protection in Mexico and the United States; and IDPs in Northern Mexico who have been displaced and stranded due to violence, deportation, and US and Mexican asylum policies. This paper introduces and integrates the themes and recommendations from this special issue. Section 1 provides a short overview of the scope, growth, and consequences of protracted displacement. Section 2 situates this phenomenon in a legal context and examines traditional and complementary solutions to displacement. Section 3 outlines topline findings, recommendations, and cross-cutting themes from the special issue. Section 4 offers conclusions and final reflections.

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.

Iranian Refugee Entrepreneurship and Inclusion in the Netherlands

AbstractNumerous studies have demonstrated the importance of entrepreneurship for migrants’ integration. Nonetheless, the impact of entrepreneurship on refugees’ inclusion and sense of belonging has been largely overlooked. This article explores how entrepreneurship contributes to the inclusion of Iranian refugee entrepreneurs, considering the different aspects of a refugee’s identity components such as ethnicity, age, class, gender, and religion. The life stories of 14 Iranian refugee entrepreneurs, who immigrated to the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s are analysed. We illustrate how different dimensions of their identity shape entrepreneurial motivations, resources, and entrepreneurial strategies. The results show that intersecting identity components impact Iranian refugee entrepreneurs’ sense of belonging. Notwithstanding the diverse ways in which individuals experience belonging, our study identifies three particular modes of belonging: hybrid, cosmopolitan, and transnational belonging. Drawing on interviews with individual refugee entrepreneurs, we conclude that entrepreneurship is a vehicle for greater acceptance and inclusion within the host society. Our study points to an urgent need to go beyond the integration paradigm by applying the concept of inclusion. The notion of inclusion enables us to gain a deeper understanding of refugees’ position in the labour market and the receiving society more broadly.

The Housing Problem and the Role of the Private Sector in Addressing it During the Years (2009-2018)

This study is trying to investigate the housing problem and the role of the private sector in its solution in Sulaimani during the years (2018-2009), the study, despite a theoretical analysis of the concept of housing and characteristics, based on the most important factors. He explained in Sulaimani, The researcher used a survey form to determine the degree of private sector participation in solving the housing problem. In this survey, 1000 forms were distributed after distribution, 915 forms were filled out correctly and the answers of the participants were analyzed from an economic and statistical point of view. The results of the study are consistent with the hypothesis of the study. The study explains the most important reasons for the housing problem in Sulaimani, which include a large number of Syrian and Iranian refugees and displaced persons from other Iraqi cities in Sulaimani, as well as misuse of land distributed by the municipality, despite increased demand due to increase marriages. The researcher concluded that the private sector has a weak role in solving the housing problem, the amount of housing supply is less than the amount of demand. The housing units produced by the private sector are expensive, and the housing units are not completed on time, which has exacerbated the housing problem

A Mind of Winter: The Transformative Experience of Estrangement by a Stateless Kurd in Exile in Denmark

AbstractThis article explores the transformative experience of estrangement by a Kurdish Iranian refugee named Hiwa in exile in Denmark. Through a person‐centered approach, I focus on what was at stake for stateless people, such as Hiwa, at a time when right‐wing populist asylum politics made achieving permanent citizenship an uphill battle and leaving Denmark impossible due to the Dublin Regulation. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of “the multiple self,” I describe Hiwa's changing self‐states as involving a triple reorientation in the form of an estranged relationship to his past, present, and envisioned future. I analyze this transformative experience as linked to an existential quest to find a space between the struggle for freedom and submission to a sense of powerlessness—experiences that sometimes elude conventional language. Finally, I suggest that reading poetry and writing about exile constituted a transitional experience enabling an inner world of emotions to be expressed. The article provides a window to the human consequences of the “Paradigm Shift” in Danish asylum politics, which entailed making all residence permits temporary—and more broadly to the growing problem of statelessness in Europe.

Lives stalled: the costs of waiting for refugee resettlement

ABSTRACT During their migration, refugees often pass through transit countries, especially before resettlement elsewhere. These stays in cities or camps may last several months or years as refugees await the next step of their journey. This paper examines the context of waiting for Iranian religious minorities who must first travel to Vienna, Austria in order to apply for resettlement to the U.S. Drawing on theories of waiting, I demonstrate how uncertainty and the passage of time shape refugees’ experience in transit contexts. While in Vienna, they endure months of compulsory idle waiting, free from persecution yet unable to begin the long-term process of settling in a new country. I argue that the duration of stay and conditions of life in transit contexts can have meaningful consequences for refugees. My findings demonstrate that even when waiting is temporary and remedied by eventual resettlement, time spent in transit carries material, emotional, and physical costs. Based on 43 interviews and participant observation with Iranian refugees in Vienna, this paper examines the precarity that is born from the uncertainty of waiting. Because resettlement ultimately provides stability, we tend to overlook the insecurities associated with this ‘pre-resettlement’ phase.

The Long Winding Road to Liberation: The Tales of Two Iranian Immigrants

ABSTRACT In this article, we attempt to illuminate the unique and distinctive experiences of Iranian refugees and immigrants through the lens of our own autobiographical and phenomenological experiences as émigrés in two separate countries, the United States and Austria. We will draw from our own personal experiences of exile, occurring at different periods in Iran’s sociopolitical history, pre- and post-Islamic revolution, to elucidate our separate and different experiences of dislocation, adjustment, and acculturation. We will illustrate that, even with the starkly differentiated patterns of our cultural and religious immersions, we appeared to share elements of experience in adjusting and adapting to our host cultures. Psychoanalytic work offered us an experience of a surrogate motherland that bridged our cultural selfhoods. In particular, analytic work provided us with a tool and a cultural vehicle to accommodate our passage, facilitating our adaptation and acculturation, our senses of selfhood, and relational dimensions. We maintain that psychoanalysis helps by illuminating and loosening patterns of attachments to archaic cultural ties, or cultural pathological accommodation, thereby allowing for the development of an expanded version of cultural horizons.

The Effects of Group Art Therapy on Reducing Psychological Stress and Improving the Quality of Life in Iranian Newcomer Children (Les effets de l’art-thérapie de groupe sur la réduction du stress psychologique et l’amélioration de la qualité de vie d’enfants nouveaux arrivants iraniens)

This study examines the effects of group art therapy on reducing psychological stress and improving the quality of life in Iranian child immigrants and refugees in order to bring cost-effective and accessible solutions to vulnerable communities. A quantitative study was conducted in an Iranian school in Montreal with 10 Iranian immigrant children aged 8 to 12 with no mental health diagnosis reported. Psychological stress of participants and their quality of life were assessed by the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised questionnaires (SCL-90-R), the Revidierter Kinder Lebensqualitätsfragebogen questionnaire (KINDL-R), and measure of the cortisol level in their saliva samples, before the intervention, after 10 weeks of group art therapy, and at the four-week follow-up. The paired t-tests showed a significant difference in the scores for PSS, SCL-90-R, and KINDL-R before the beginning and after the end of 10 art therapy sessions. In addition, the paired t-tests showed that the reduction in the stress level remained statistically significant even after four weeks of finishing the art therapy intervention. Although cortisol levels did not decrease during the last session, they were significantly lower in comparison to those before the start of the intervention.

IRANIAN IMMIGRANTS’ LIVING CONDITION IN RUSSIA AND TURKEY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

COVID-19 has emerged in a world tightly related to local and international population movements. International migrants are a group of very vulnerable people who are directly and indirectly affected by Covid-19. They face additional barriers rather than the locals, such as language barrier, border closure, visa barrier, etc. The aim of this article is to discuss impacts of Coronavirus COVID-19 on Iranian immigrants’ lives in Russia and Turkey. The 1979 Islamic Revolution led to unprecedented numbers of Iranians leaving their home country. Although many Iranian have immigrated to both countries in the last decades, the forms and patterns of migration of Iranians to these two countries are different. And Turkey has been one of the main countries of destination for Iranian immigrants and it also acted as a transit country for Iranian refugees that left Turkey to Europe. And Russia on the other hand, in the last years, hosts Iranian students who form the most number of immigrants in this country. The qualitative approach, grounded theory is used in this research. We interviewed four Iranian immigrants in Russia and three Iranian immigrants in Turkey online in platform zoom in the Persian language, the age range of our interviewees was from 18-35 years old, two of the interviewees were women and five men. Findings in this study show that language barrier, financial instability, access to information, and in some cases discriminations have been the most important problems that Iranians faced during the pandemic in these two countries. However, they believe that the two countries were quite successful in adapting themselves to the new pattern of life.

Failed Promise of Equality: Iranian women’s integration in the Netherlands

AbstractIranians are considered the most successful refugee group in the Netherlands in terms of integration. However, their path towards inclusion is not without struggles. This paper highlights organizational and societal limiting factors that are often forgotten in research and policy on refugees’ integration in the job market and on inclusion in general. The data presented are based on 20 years of research on narratives from Iranian refugees – mostly women – about their struggles towards societal and organizational inclusion. This article critically discusses the implications of dominant discourses and policies on the integration of refugees in the past and present to enable reflection for the future. The empirical data show how the consistency of normalized images of refugees hinders their path to long‐term inclusion. The data analysis is situated within the theoretical discussion on refugees’ integration in the labour market, connecting bodies of literature from refugee studies, organization studies and integration studies.

Spiritual Cosmopolitanism, Transnational Migration, and the Bahá’í Faith

Scholars have wrestled with the question of how people can be persuaded to extend feelings of kinship beyond their own ethnic or national groups. This article identifies spiritual cosmopolitanism, whose principles of universal love and harmony can be found in the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith, as key to such borderless solidarity. Drawing on data gathered from interviews with Iranian refugees who have settled in the United States, the article demonstrates how cosmopolitan principles shape the worldviews of Bahá’ís. Through this case study, spiritual cosmopolitanism’s potential to enrich public arguments for the inclusion of Others such as immigrants becomes apparent.

IRAN’S POSITION IN THE WORLD IN TERMS OF REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS

The article discusses the concepts of refugees and asylum seekers in Iran, in this study the key statistics and studies of forced migration, are considered and in this concept the definition and statistics of number of Iranian refugees and asylum seekers is developing a form to understand the scale, reasons, and the direction of forced migration mobility from Iran since it has been one of the main destination and origin countries of forced migration. As the number of refugees and asylum seekers continues to grow, concerns are growing about the formation and the type of Iranian diasporas who are living in the other countries that will impact on certain socio-political structure of the country, especially those had left the country after the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988. Although so far we know that, the reasons of forced migration is depended on many social factors, whether and how this type of migration consequences will affect the internal socio-political situation of Iran is still unclear and is hardly possible due to data quality, lack of data and timing issues, however, in long run as a result of forced migration and increase in the number of refugees and asylum seekers will have a negative impact on the refugees’ perception towards their country and the current regime. Moreover, forced migration has emerged in the world tightly related to social problems, Findings in this study show that, this type of migration has increased in Iran after controversial presidential election and the “green movement” protest in 2009 which stimulated forced migration from Iran to European countries, and it has formed a very political diaspora, that is consists of specialists, liberals, activists, etc. therefore, Iran as one of the main countries of origin and destination of refugees and asylum seekers experiences the forced migration because of the factors such as: human rights for political activists and defenders, prisoners’ rights and treatment, women’s right and rights of religious minorities, that have increased the illegal methods of emigration, people were smuggled across the borders, and many of people have used different methods such as changing religion as a tool to apply for asylum on the grounds that conversion from Islam is punishable by the Islamic republic of Iran.

Gender and social control in negotiations over filial obligations: Adult children and their ageing parents in Iranian refugee families

This article investigates gendered meanings attached to filial obligations when they are negotiated between Iranian refugee parents and their children. We investigate gender in intergenerational relationships by using the frame of social control, understanding it as a form of institutional, normative and internalized control. This research is based on an ethnographic study of Iranian families living in Finland. The data consists of observations and interviews with adult children and their parents. The results show that the daughters were able to negotiate their filial obligations with their parents in strategic ways. They actively spoke against their parents’ normative control to make independent choices. However, following their parents’ wishes was also a way for the daughters to actively maintain their own cultural values. The sons were often expected to take care of their ageing parents and had little agency when negotiating the intensity of these demands for support. So rather than making decisions about maintaining their cultural values like the daughters, the sons were often automatically expected to offer support and guidance. However, the sons experienced less normative control when interacting with their parents.

Refugees’ Transnational Practices: Gay Iranian Men Navigating Refugee Status and Cross-border Ties in Canada

Despite the rise in displaced population numbers, refugees’ transnational lives, and those of sexual-racial minority refugees in particular, have remained at the margins of transnational migration studies. In this article, I focus on the case of gay Iranian refugees in Canada and analyze their pre-migration transnational lives and understandings of the asylum process, their post-migration transnational ties, and their activism practices. I underline refugees’ transnational agencies and argue against the rhetoric that represents refugees as passive migrants whose emigration means detachment from home countries. Based on my field work findings, I endorse analytical and methodological shifts to simultaneously explore refugees’ pre-migration and en-route lives in addition to their post-migration lives to stress the power relations that, through social ties, affect refugees’ transnational practices. I connect transnational, forced, and queer migration literature to the Bourdieusian social theory and, in conclusion, argue that it is necessary to deploy de-nationalized methods of inquiry to account for intra-group diversities as well as border-crossing social ties in addition to economic ties.

Intergenerational Ambivalence Among Iranian Refugee Families in Finland

The Nordic Journal of Migration Research is a double-blind peer-reviewed, open access international journal that is cost free for authors and readers alike. The journal publishes theoretical and empirical analyses of migratory processes, dealing with themes such as nationalism and transnationalism, ethnic relations and racism, border practices and belonging. The journal gives priority to Nordic issues, but publishes articles also from other geographical contexts.Back content now available in our issue archive.

Perceptions of forgiveness in response to systemic injustice among Iranian refugees.

Perceptions of forgiveness in response to systemic injustice among Iranian refugees.

The Role of Intimate Relationship Status, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Doing Fieldwork among Sexual–Racial Minority Refugees: An Intersectional Methodology*

Feminist researchers from a range of disciplines have called for consolidation of intersectionality as a methodology. In this article, I contribute to the literature on intracategorical intersectional methodology by drawing on my experiences of conducting fieldwork with 19 gay male Iranian refugees in Canada. Also, by merging the research on intersectionality, sexuality, and refugee studies, I take intersectionality beyond its traditional application on the lives of women of color. I particularly focus on relations between intimate relationship status and insider status, sexuality and internal gatekeepers, and ethnicity and obtaining signed consent forms. Assuming that ethnographers, albeit marginally, participate in or become part of their participant group during fieldwork, I demonstrated the utility of intracategorical intersectional methodology for a systematic examination of power dynamics and the interactions between participants’ and researchers’ markers of identity. I argue that intracategorical intersectionality challenges static definitions of insiderness in qualitative research and provides researchers with nuanced and non‐hegemonic analyses of research process.