Localized Impact of Global Restructuring of Work: Border-Crossing Stories of Iranian Women

Abstract

Using a paradigmatic framework ofstructure and civil voices, this article responds to the question posed by an Iranian woman in Canada: why she is not able to find work in her professional area of expertise. The structural (race/gender/class) paradigm suggests a correlation between the ghettoization of Iranian/immigrant women into dead-end work and global restructuring of women’s work, the impact of which is localized. The civilvoices paradigm provides a broader context where Iranian women’s lives are seen as part of the modernization project in Iran and elsewhere. Both paradigms bring home the need to interrogate the larger structures ofdomination as these come to light in the bordercrossing stories of women.