The Iranian diaspora is increasingly manifesting itself as a multi-layered political actor located in the global North and South. With the aim of contributing to a more intricate and colourful scholarly understanding of the global Iranian diaspora, this paper focuses on the resistance practices of first-generation Iranians in Spain, within the Women, Life, Freedom (WLF) transnational support since September 2022. The principal method of investigation has been the semi-structured interview (in Spanish and Farsi) -conducted to first-generation Iranians located in Spain- enriched by an assessment of online resources such as newspapers and social media. As seen in the literature on diaspora politics and transnational political mobilising, socio-political events in the country of origin can provoke the actions of members of the diaspora to move from latency to visibility. This was palpable in Spain, as the WLF movement shifted the resistance practices of organised Iranians in Spain towards a more visible role in the local civil society, as seen in the organising of protests, marches and public talks, as well as participation in media outlets, in support of WLF and human rights in Iran more generally. These collective acts of resistance represent peaks within a continuum of resistance practices that have connected Iranians in Spain to the socio-political events in their country of origin since the 1980s. Following the literature on resistance studies, the resistance practices carried out by these Iranian diasporans respond to dynamics that are both collective and organised, as well as fluid and individual, thus requiring framing within both.

We report results from a multi-method study of Iranian specialists working in American academia. A Qualtrics survey was conducted in early 2023, and a subset of respondents participated in follow up focus groups in 2023. We will be conducting a second round of focus groups with the same individuals in 2024. The survey builds upon our previous 2016 survey; new questions in the 2023 questionnaire asked scholars how their research was affected by events in Iran, Us-Iran relations, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We also added new questions about media outreach and interaction with journalists. The focus groups provided us with more expansive and more nuanced observations to supplement the survey data. Our 2016 survey results picked up references to JCPOA and the 2016 presidential election. The 2023 survey results, supplemented by focus group data, point to a similar awareness and sensitivity to developing events, namely the Women.Life.Freedom protests. The 2023 results show a heightened level of protest activity and public outreach among Iranian/Iranian American-identifying Iran specialists. The increase in civic engagement tracks with comparable surveys of political attitudes among Iranian-Americans more broadly, and sets Iran specialists apart from the general US public. The focus group participants articulated dual strains on their careers. First, in discussing their institutional experiences, they highlighted the impacts of new budget priorities that reflect a mix of enrollment challenges, waning interest in area studies in general and more targeted biases against Iranian Studies specifically. While survey data indicate improved levels of satisfaction with the state of the field and their own careers, it also indicated a persistent gap between individual professional satisfaction and optimism about the “state of the field.” The focus groups filled out the picture for us by noting pressures experienced in the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic to justify their institutional presence as distinct areas of specialization. Second, in discussing their own levels of civic and political engagement around Women.Life.Freedom, our focus group participants reported the personal and professional effects of a backlash against them (or colleagues) who publicly challenged the maximalist regime-change rhetoric in the Iranian diaspora. Our 2024 focus group sessions will assess the impact of the war on Gaza on Iran specialists, as Iran’s role in events raised fresh concerns about lending their professional standing publicly to their political views.

This research explores the tensions and complexities in the work of an Iranian diasporic feminist campaign and the techno-social affordances of social media and data-driven platforms for (lack of) recognition and (in)visibility of feminist activism. Situating this research within the sociopolitical context of feminist activism in the diaspora, I look at the 2017-2018 #WhiteWednesdays hashtag campaign on Twitter (X), launched by a New York-based journalist and women’s rights advocate, which invited women to post photos of themselves walking unveiled or wearing White headscarves. This campaign, using the Orientalist trope of the veil aligned with imperial feminist discourses, gained heightened visibility and coverage in popular media, particularly American mainstream news. The research draws upon the concept of datafied recognition and visibility (Brighenti, 2010; Campanella, 2022) to explore how the campaign’s practices are distributed, under which logics, and with what consequences. It asks: To what extent does the #WhiteWednesdays campaign from the diaspora articulate a mode of feminist activism and resistance intertwined with imperial feminist frameworks and logics of recognition and visibility through data-driven digital platforms? In what ways does the mainstream news mediate the #WhiteWednesdays campaign as the dominant resistance narrative of women in Iran, resulting in the active suppression of local campaigns? To grapple with these questions, I employ digital ethnography and trace its life on Twitter and in Farsi-speaking sponsored popular outlets and the American mainstream news to argue how liking, retweeting, sharing, and commenting are social media practices implicated in the platform’s dynamics of recognition, attention, and visibility. These practices imply a particular type of sociability marked by the process of datafication, which is heavily influenced by high demands for branding and personal visibility, commodifying the suffering of the Other women, transforming violence and injustice into spectacles that generate profit, and erasing the voices from the margins. In this sense, the struggles of women on the ground are both datafied and mediatized. The simultaneity between that which is datafied and mediatized further explains how news discourse extends conversations about the already-existing Orientalist trope of the veil and represents a binary narrative, glossing over the multivocality of protests. Datafied visibility and the mediatized attention dedicated to them contribute to legitimizing imperialist agendas while actively silencing alternative political imaginaries. The research offers a nuanced perspective on the evolving movement for women’s liberation, a movement that culminated in the 2022 uprising in Iran around the issue of compulsory hijab.

This paper presents a nuanced exploration of how ethnoreligious perceptions are negotiated in the everyday lives of the Iranian diaspora. While existing popular perceptions often portray a homogeneous Iranian society derived from limited ethnographic research, this study draws on four years of in-depth fieldwork to unveil the complexities inherent in negotiating these perceptions. The primary focus lies on cultural practices, specifically erfān assemblies, religious-cultural events, and singing classes, as discursive sites where individuals engage in intra-inter-ethnoreligious negotiations. Utilizing Bucholtz and Hall’s framework of distinction, authentication, and authorization practices (2004), the study demonstrates how individuals produce salient differences, socially construct identities as non/genuine, and legitimize identities through hegemonic and institutional authority. The examination goes beyond the surface level of negotiation and explores sociocultural mechanisms employed to integrate or marginalize individuals within the social circle. Socialization is revealed as a transactional tool, and diversity is strategically utilized. The research uncovers the prevalence of essentialist notions in reproducing homogenous and static ethnoreligious identities. The concept of fractally recursive identities is introduced, emphasizing localism concerning characterological sign-values to places like Shiraz, Hamedan, Tehran, and being dehati ‘peasant.’ Despite outward appearances of diversity within the Iranian diaspora communities of practice, individuals often find themselves treated and perceived as ‘Others’ in various social groups. In other words, despite the apparent diversity within the Iranian diaspora, individuals may still experience a sense of exclusion or marginalization when interacting with different social groups. Erfān assemblies, although attempting to redefine these dynamics and unsettle them, inadvertently contribute to their reconstitution in less overtly discursive ways. Furthermore, the study explores the embodiment of ‘Otherness’ and the attempt to create inclusive spaces by essentializing certain aspects in both Muslim and Jewish dominant spaces.

For 1.5-generation immigrants (those who migrate prior to adulthood), forging a sense of belonging is a non-linear and complex process. Oscillating between “here” and “there,” commonly attributed to their relationship to the home and host countries, can lead to an absence of essential needs like belonging and connection. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has experienced large waves of migration, with members of its diaspora settling in almost every continent. The geopolitical complexities of the Iranian diaspora, along with the Iranian regime’s policies and turbulent relationships with other nations, challenge the processes of establishing connection, and forging belonging among its members. These challenges may be particularly pronounced for 1.5-generation immigrants who maintain (limited) ties to both their home and host countries. This paper responds to two questions: first, what are the experiences of belonging of 1.5-generation Iranians currently living in Toronto, and Istanbul? And second, how do these 1.5-generation Iranians define a sense of belonging, and home? To explore these questions, I use life mapping, an innovative arts-based method, along with semi-structured interviews with 12 participants in Toronto and approximately 10 participants in Istanbul. Life maps give participants the opportunity to share and process important life events in an order they choose. Simultaneously, semi-structured interviews give them the space to co-construct knowledge, demonstrating how they define and experience home and belonging. Toronto and Istanbul are the sites of this research as they present different sociopolitical contexts, policies, and proximity to Iran. My findings emphasise the importance of contextual factors, including political era, international events, and family makeup, in shaping how belonging is understood and experienced. Furthermore, Participants’ stories illustrate diverse paths to belonging and challenge the limits of conventional notions of belonging. Finally, the findings demonstrate that following the experiences of oscillation, some 1.5-generations embrace and forge their own definition and sense of belonging beyond the “here” or “there”, some exist in an “elsewhere”, while others still, continue to oscillate in between. The research sheds light on ongoing experiences of migrations from Iran, along with how global political events, including the recent Women, Life, Freedom revolution in Iran, may affect migrants’ transnational connections and sense of belonging. The findings of this study offer valuable insights for both scholarship and practical application, informing policymakers and community organizations about the nuanced dynamics of belonging among 1.5-generation Iranians and guiding the development of more effective programs and support services for immigrant youth.