Dimorphic diasporas: Assembling identity, community belonging, and collective action among Iranians in London

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Dimorphic diasporas thesis articulates a dimorphic paradigm - a dynamic mix of nomad and sedentary states (Ibn Khaldun, 2005, [1377]; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) - in which mobility is merely one of the life strategies available to transmigrants and not the primary analytic concept. In doing so, this thesis is both inspired by - and offers a corrective to - the mobilities paradigm, which has been instrumental in shifting migration and urban studies away from their 'sedentary bias' (Cresswell, 2006; Urry, 2007). The thesis aims to understand and explore the possibilities for positive collective action among middling, transnational Iranians. It analyses ten assemblages of (mostly) Iranian transmigrants in London (and beyond). Through reading these assemblages, I have arrived at and articulated a dimorphic paradigm as a transhistorical analytic concept that draws on elements of nomadic and sedentary tendencies prevalent in the history of the Iranian plateau. My thesis thereby proposes a new conceptual framework that (1) accommodates a mixture of nomad and sedentary socialities and (2) relates a micro-politics of non-state assemblages to a macro-politics of state contexts. The thesis borrows methods from Participatory Action Research, auto-ethnographic and netnographic approaches to examine the everyday lives of my networks of friends and family, and several forums of collective action I was involved with. These networks are understood not so much as field sites, but as temporary assemblages held together by affective intensities and material flows, which also create their emergent agencies. In working with this paradigm, this thesis reveals the micro-politics of partially 'unsettled' Iranian migrants' lives: it uses nomad-sedentary heuristics to trace the creation of trust and kinship in assemblages and reveals the potentials of their emergent agencies in collective action. Dimorphism engages with the creation of solidarities beyond identity politics in order to increase their potentials for progressive politics and warding off the crystallisation of hierarchy, exclusion, or essentialism. It therefore allows action researchers not only to study, but also experiment with, the progressive political potentials of (un)settled modes of being and becoming.