Intergroup Relations and Group Maintenance

Individual Iranians have faced racism in different areas: in the labour market, through the media, and in everyday encounters with other Canadians. The mass media have played a major role in the production of racist and sexist images. What could be considered a media attack on the Iranian diaspora occurred when American hostages were taken in Iran in the 1980s. It continued during and after the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91 and was part of a general response to the resurgence of Islamist movements in many parts of the Middle East. Reaction to these incidents has reinforced stereotypical racist imagery directed against Iranians in Canada, who have generally been depicted in the media as terrorists or fundamentalists. Images of veiled and apparently subjugated women have also been widespread. Such treatment has motivated some Iranians, most of whom have experienced discrimination in the labour market, to establish ethnic associations out of self-defence. The experience of discrimination, then, has led to the further consolidation of an Iranian community in Canada.

But the new self-consciousness has not emerged without accompanying divisions among individuals and community associations that adhere to irreconcilable political viewpoints. Such divisions, mainly between immigrants of the first wave and those of the second, have been exacerbated by government policy. State-run programs have led to the creation of an ethnic elite through the training of refugees and exiles. Iranian immigrants who received financial assistance from the Canadian government during their first year had access to language courses or professional trainee services aimed at pushing them towards the labour market so that they would become independent as quickly as possible. Those whose status was under review preferred to find work immediately, in spite of their lack of qualifications, in order to demonstrate their willingness to integrate into Canadian society. This experience may have varied for men and women as a result of the sexist attitudes that women faced both within the community and in society generally.

Iranian immigrants who arrived between the 1960s and 1978 integrated into Canadian society as individuals, not collectively. It was only around 1982 that Iranians in Canada began to organize themselves formally as a group. The construction of such an ethnicity has been linked to economic and political circumstances in Iran and in Canada, state regulation of entry into the country, labour market restrictions, the experience of prejudice and discrimination, and the politics of multiculturalism. The notion of exile and the non-voluntary character of recent immigration have made possible a collective identification, leading to the mobilization of ethnic, as well as gender and class, resources. This sense of group solidarity has enabled the community to overcome political and economic problems linked to its immigrant status and labour market restrictions.

The daily life of Iranian immigrants encompasses the shifting boundaries of home and exile, not only between Canada and Iran but transnationally with the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. For many Iranians in this country, it has meant a continuous movement between a local and a global reality and a constant sense of connection to more than one homeland or more than one location in the diaspora. Such a linkage is part of their self-identification; its dimensions are determined not only by individual experience but also by the character of the group, which may include religious affiliation, sexual preference, and gender as well as ethnicity.