Locating Iranian Diasporas in Fifty Years of Academic Discourse: Critical Review of Acculturation Theory

Abstract

Over the past five decades, Iran has experienced a massive international emigration of its citizens. Consequently, Iranian diasporas formed in several Western countries as their main destinations. Diverse academic research in gender studies, sociology of the family, and migration has taken an acculturation approach to explaining the struggles of Iranians living abroad. This article aims to discuss the analytical issues that are involved in taking the acculturation framework and the binary view of either traditional/modern or religious/secular when studying Iranian diasporas. The study argues that many publications in the field have contributed to the hegemonic discourse of Iranian migrants as being problematic and whose ‘culture’ does not fit ‘Western modernity’. Such an analytical departure bypasses the intersecting structural inequalities that Iranian diasporas have encountered in Western societies. The article suggests that focusing on the politics of belonging and exclusion is a way out of viewing culture as a given and fixed entity with clear-cut boundaries.