The Role of Stigmatized Nationality in Constructing Communities and Identities among Iranians in North America

• In Event: 242 - Section on International Migration Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Immigration and Discrimination

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of stigmatized nationality in processes of incorporation and community construction by comparing established Iranian communities in Toronto and Los Angeles. Using in-depth interviews, ethnographic observation, and content analysis, I found that first-generation Iranians in these two hyperdiverse metropolitan areas have constructed communities and collective identities based on contrasting narratives of Iranian identity. I contend that this outcome cannot be explained by the well-known differences regarding incorporation outcomes in Canada and the United States. Instead, I argue that these contrasts result from the convergence of distinct regimes of incorporation in societies of settlement, internal divisions within Iranian society that contribute to processes of migrant selectivity, and differing local prejudices attached to Iranian nationality. While Iranians in both areas shared experiences with xenophobia and Islamophobia, Iranian nationality was reported as a detrimental attribute only by Iranians in Los Angeles. Using Goffman’s concepts of stigma and impression management, I argue that this key contrast affects the content of local identity projects and shapes integration processes. Because Iranians in Los Angeles experience a spoiled collective identity, many in local communities engage in processes of impression management by constructing narratives of Iranian identity that facilitate integration and create distance from the belligerent Iranian state. Because they lack this specific status threat and are incorporating into an officially multicultural society, Iranians in Toronto have constructed a more pluralist community and a diversity of identity narratives. These findings are applicable to the incorporation outcomes of other stigmatized national-origin groups.

Author

• Timothy Scott Gutierrez, University of California-Davis