Intersectionality, Class and Migration

Narratives of Iranian Women Migrants in the U.K.

Mastoureh Fathi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781137525307
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

This book offers critical analysis of everyday narratives of Iranian middle class migrants who use their social class and careers to "fit in" with British society.Based on a series of interviews and participant observations with two cohorts of "privileged" Iranian migrant women working as doctors, dentists and academics in Britain—groups that are usually absent from studies around migration, marginality and intersectionality—the book applies narrative analysis and intersectionality to critically analyse social class in relation to gender, ethnicity, places and sense of belonging in Britain. As concepts such as "Nation, " "Migrant, " "Native, " "Other, " "Security, " and "Border" have populated public and policy discourse, it is vital to explore migrants' experiences and perceptions of the society in which they live, to answer deceptively simplequestions such as?"What does class mean?" and "How is class translated in the lives of migrants?"

© The Author(s) 2017

M. FathiIntersectionality, Class and MigrationThe Politics of Intersectionalityhttps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52530-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Class, Intersectionality and Iranian Diaspora

Mastoureh Fathi¹

(1)

School of Law, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, UK

End Abstract

At the heart of this book is an in-depth analysis of class experiences that at first glance may not be about class! The novel approach taken in this book is intersectional—one identity category is analysed in relation to processes that construct it in different ways. In this book, my endeavour is to answer subtle questions that take class experiences to the next level in an intersectional way: how it is possible to identify one’s class position through migration stories? To what extent do experiences of being an independent woman affect one’s understanding of social class in an Iranian family setting? How does living in a particular neighbourhood make one more/less British? Does having children (born in a migrant family) create a sense of belonging or make one more alienated to British society? These are important questions that are emerging in public and policy discourses in today’s world where many countries’ foreign policy, health, education and security policies, focus on migrants. It is vital to consider what processes lead to migrants’ responses to alienating policies that address them, remind them that they do not belong to host societies even though they are badly needed in these societies to run the very same services that they are accused of damaging. This book is about class analysis through everyday experiences of highly skilled migrants who should all feel part of the British society, but, as will become clear, often do not. My intention here is to bring back class experiences to feminist analysis in order to better understand identities and positionalities after migration by focusing on personal narratives and their intersection with other elements of the lives of migrant women featured in this book. Intersections of identity are at the heart of this book in terms of methodology: how class is produced, recognised and utilised strategically as an identity marker and how it is seen as a framework for understanding the wider social context of Iranian migrant women’s lives.

Class is a salient aspect of everyone’s life, especially for those who are hurt by it, as Sennet and Cobb (1993) put it eloquently in their work on working-class American men in the 1970s, although class experiences are not limited to working-class individuals. Stories about class provide us with a bigger picture of the world in which we live, both about the marginalised ‘other’, such as migrants, women and the working classes as well as about the privileged individuals, such as the ‘white’, the middle class, the wealthy; the latter group tends to be left out of studies that analyse the importance of class. Or it might be better to say that we, as researchers, feel compelled to study the former due to the responsibilities or the risks attached to study of the latter. However, there is another reason for the absence of class: social class may not have seemed important in the understanding of many social movements such as feminism and anti-racist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, as Beverly Skeggs (1997a) , a British scholar on class and gender, puts it: ‘without understanding the significance of class positioning many of the women’s movements through social space , through education , families, labour markets and, in particular, in the production of their subjectivity, could not be understood’ (Skeggs 1997a, p. 6).

The impetus in writing this book stems from my own classed experiences of growing up in 1980s Iran and post-millennium UK as a graduate student and a migrant woman. Despite efforts aimed at turning children of my age into a classless generation, class had a strong presence for me, my siblings and perhaps for everyone whom I knew around me in Iran. As the children of the revolution, or the dahe shasti (1960s) generation, we all appeared to live similarly in our daily lives, turning up every day for mass prayers at school , wearing the same dark-coloured uniforms and reading the same books designed for both school and extra-school curriculum. Despite Ayatollah Khomeini’s pronouncement of Iran as a classless society (Nomani and Behdad 2006) in the 1980s, the general understanding of and yearning for education , particularly among women, undeniably shaped lives of generations of girls and boys after 1979. Many women from working-class backgrounds entered university or, rather, persuaded their families to let them study on the basis that university was now considered to be an Islamic place (Khosrokhavar and Ghaneirad 2010).¹ Health and education sectors were expanded to provide a female workforce to serve female clients, a policy that was encouraged by the government in order to segregate the sexes in the public sphere. Although such policies shaped the workforce and drove women to specific healthcare and teaching disciplines, they had profound effects on Iranian society, influencing men’s expectations of their wives, children’s understanding of their mothers, women’s sense of independence and their class position, both within the home sphere and in the society. However, class experiences always remained a priori, a subject that was perhaps not worthy of research, or not available to be explained and analysed, perhaps even redundant as a marker of identity for women in Iran, as their class positions were always dependent on their husbands or fathers. These classed realities testify to the lasting, though constantly changing, presence of class in Iranians’ lives.

Class analysis in this book is subjective, relational and is limited to the interpersonal relationships among Iranian migrants at a particular time and context (British society 2007–2012). It applies an intersectional framework to challenge the formation of class in relation to gendered growing-up, performing, racialisation, place-making and belonging . This is done by focusing on the narratives that show the various categories and processes which work together to marginalise, empower, sideline or spotlight individuals (although I do not limit my analysis to a binary distinction).² I use an analysis of intersectionality that falls neither into ‘anticategorical’ nor in ‘intercategorical’ analysis of intersectionality (McCall 2005), as it offers a unique way that does not deny the categories themselves but to look at the processes that help them to come to existence: categories such as middle class, Iranian, British, English, doctor, migrant and so on. After discussing the theoretical framework (Chap. 2) this book will delve into translocational components, processes and complexities of these categories. The analytical chapters include classed pathways of becoming an educated woman, (Chap. 3); the meaning making of spaces in which one is living one’s life, (Chap. 4); classed performances and practices, such as learning to perform as a doctor (Chap. 5); experiences of racialisation, (Chap. 6); the sense of being included or excluded in British society, (Chap. 7) concentrating on the formation of privilege and dominance of class in the world and among migrants (Chap. 8). As such, it attempts to highlight the role that power relations play in the discussions around class, not just on a macro-level, such as the power that theocratic government of Iran deploys in disciplining individuals, but at the level that governs, coerces and sometimes helps everyone’s life in all spheres and angles (Foucault 1982). Power relations that are central to the micro-politics of these women’s lives exist in myriad ways between individuals in their day-to-day experiences of inclusion and exclusion, belonging and identity formation (Tamboukou 1999).

1.1 Iranian Women’s Employment and Class

In the decades after the Iranian revolution in 1979, due, among many other reasons, to mismanagement, political corruption and lack of international interest in investment in Iran, the job market offered limited choices, which affected women more harshly than men. Employers’ preferences were to employ men, because women were likely to be prevented from work by husbands, fall pregnant or refuse to be flexible due to childcare responsibilities (Khosrokhavar and Ghaneirad 2010). This also led to mass emigration of an educated young workforce.³

In the West, literature on classed identities mainly argues that choice, decision making and possession of cultural capital are important in determining one’s class position (Bourdieu 1984; Lawler 2008; Skeggs 1997b). However, this may not be the correct characterisation of Iranian women, as career choices are limited for women in Iran. Women are constantly pressured to choose professions that are ‘compatible’ both in law and in society ...