Transnationalism Within: internal diversity in the Iranian diaspora

Abstract

Transnationalism research is dominated by studies of national groups. This paper instead looks at the internal diversity of one national diasporic community. The analysis draws on research with the children of Iranian migrants from Baha'i and Muslim backgrounds in Sydney, London and Vancouver. This paper shows the differential reproduction of homeland class relations in different cities of the Iranian diaspora, and how these processes are influenced by the internal diversity within the Iranian diaspora. The reproduction of homeland class relations in the diaspora in part aids in the reproduction of real and imagined links to Iran, fostering transnational social fields that extend from the upper class areas of north Tehran into the suburbs of Kensington in London, West Vancouver, or St Ives in Sydney. Connections by socioeconomic status, or class, by religion, by generation and time of settlement are shown in this paper to exist alongside national affiliation as possible lenses through which transnational communities can be understood. All of these forms of communal belonging produce distinctive and yet intersecting transnational social fields.

Keywords:

• Iran
• Baha'i
• Muslim
• transnationalism
• religious identity
• class
• second generation

Notes

1. As this paper contends, there is no comprehensive Iranian diaspora. Rather, there are different experiences of Iranian community amongst different groups from an Iranian background, defined along ethnic, linguistic and religious lines, which are diasporic and transnational in form, but may be differentially experienced by different groups. I use the term Iranian diaspora/s to reflect this diverse experience of diaspora, which is divergent within Iranian migrant groups, but nonetheless may also come together at times to express a nationally unified diasporic migrant experience. Elsewhere I use the term ‘Iranian diaspora’ to represent a constructed national migrant communal affiliation that needs to be critically unsettled.

2. The name Iran was officially attached to the modern nation-state on the first day of the Persian New Year in 1935 (Kashani-Sabet 1999, p. 219). Prior to this the area of modern Iran was the Persian Empire. This is particularly significant for the discussion of Baha'is, whose religious texts refer to Persia. Baha'is almost universally use the terms Persia and Persian in lieu of Iran and Iranian.

3. The national language, Farsi, is the public community language of Iranian migrants and their children. However, there is significant linguistic diversity among the Iranian diaspora/s, including Turkic languages such as Azeri, as well as ethno-religious languages such as Armenian, and regional dialects. Several respondents spoke a different language at home whilst speaking with other ‘Iranians’ in Farsi. For some the immediate family members, particularly older relatives, did not speak Farsi well and so a dialect or another language was spoken with them.