Researching Iranian Diasporic Education: Reflections on Political and Generational Dynamics in the U.S.

• In Event: Global Politics, Educational Self-Determination, and Intergenerational Learning in the Iranian Diaspora

Abstract

Objectives/purpose: Iranian diasporic education in the U.S. remains an understudied yet politically charged arena where questions of memory, identity, and belonging intersect. The Iranian diaspora in the United States, which began forming in the 1970s, expanded dramatically following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Spanning several generations of Iranian American life, this diaspora has only recently become the focus of inquiries into community-organized educational spaces. Drawing on the author’s two decades of research on Iranian diasporic spaces in the US, this paper connects educational practices across these sites to the broader political moments in which they were enacted. In doing so, it aims to highlight how Iranian politics—encompassing state repression, protest movements, and foreign policy—shape and inform diasporic sociopolitical and educational practices. These practices, in turn, inform the trajectories and possibilities of diasporic future making.

Perspectives/theoretical framework: This study puts Mamdani’s (2005) discussion of “good Muslim/bad Muslim” in relation to the politics of visibility that are expressed within and across Iranian diasporic spaces. Mamdani demonstrated how Muslim-Americans are framed as “good” or “bad” in relation to their alignment with U.S. foreign policy, particularly during the War on Terror. Reframed as “good Iranian/bad Iranian,” this theoretical lens illuminates how Iranian politics shape diasporic identities and their expressions in educational and community contexts.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: The paper draws on multiple approaches: (1) observations, focus groups, and interviews from case studies on Iranian diasporic education across different U.S. regions (Author, 2012; 2014; 2019); (2) the author’s autoethnographic reflections on participation in these spaces over time; and (3) observations of representational practices within Iranian diasporic communities on social media. Autoethnography is employed to reflexively historicize how Iranian politics constitute diasporic educational practices.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials: The analysis is based on qualitative data from case studies of diasporic educational spaces and the author’s autoethnographic reflections, prompted by a rereading of their research inquiries and personal experiences within Iranian diasporic communities and spaces.

Results/Points of View/Conclusions: In drawing on Mamdani’s work and offering a historicized and reflexive discussion regarding inquiry on Iranian diaspora education, this paper illustrates the recurrence of several political tropes and scripts of dissent in these spaces. These recurring political tropes serve as a conceptual provocation to explore the following question with other panelists: How does research in diasporic spaces of education help us to develop more detailed insights into the politics of unforgetting and future building?

Scholarly significance: This paper contributes to debates in diaspora and identity studies by analyzing Iranian diasporic educational spaces as arenas where collective memory, sociopolitical connections to Iran, and notions of Iranianness are actively constructed. It also contributes to understandings of the social contexts of diasporic education by examining how the internal dynamics of these spaces intersect with broader political forces, including state repression, diasporic solidarity and dissent, and US-Iran relations. This approach is productive for understanding how educational practices become tools for unforgetting and imagining diasporic futures. [495]

Author

• Roozbeh Shirazi, University of Minnesota