Exilic Future-Making: How Iranian Diaspora Movements Contest the Post-Regime State Under Crisis

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Movements as Transnational Processes

Abstract

This project examines the way the Iranian diaspora makes claims for what I call "exilic future-making," that is, the way exiles think about, argue about, and negotiate what the future might hold after the current regime. We already know from previous research that the diaspora is not a homogeneous actor but rather a diverse one that can play a central role in counter-hegemonic struggles over the homeland (Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004; Moss 2016; Barrett & Kurzman 2004). We know very little about the manner in which the exile actually thinks about who might come next, what kind of government might follow the current one, etc. According to the transnational social fields of Levitt & Glick Schiller, the projective agency of Emirbayer & Mische (1998), the devaluation of the importance of power in the social sciences as argued by McVeigh (2022), as well as the challenges in mobilizing the diaspora as argued by Chaudhary & Moss (2019), the project argues that the politics of the exile is actually conducted along the lines of the intersection of the three axes of leverage: geopolitical sponsorship, moral boundary-making with the diaspora publics, as well as the reputational legacy of the diaspora organizations. Rather than seeing the diaspora as a homogeneous actor in struggle with the current Iranian state, this project instead conceptualizes the diaspora public as a contested space in which different actors vie for legitimacy, representation, and the design of the future state. This project makes an intervention in social movement theory, transnational social theory, as well as revolution studies by showing that the publics of the exiles are not marginal but rather central sites for the reimagining of the future state.

Author

• Vahid Jadidi, University of Notre Dame