The diversity of the Iranian presence in the United Arab Emirates stems both from long-standing migratory ties between southern Iran and the Arabian coast and from more recent movements—mainly since the 1980s—of migrants who have arrived directly from Iranian metropolitan centers such as Tehran and Isfahan, or those who chose to settle in Dubai after one or more migration experiences in Europe or the United States. This historical stratification is reflected in the legal status of Iranian migrants in the UAE. Those who settled prior to 1971—before the establishment of the United Arab Emirates and the promulgation of the nationality and passport law (qānūn al-jinsiyya wa jawāzāt al-safar, Federal Law no. 17 of 1972, adopted one year after independence)—were, in many cases, able to obtain Emirati citizenship. By contrast, later arrivals have mostly retained their Iranian nationality or acquired Western citizenship through migration experiences prior to settling in Dubai. The Iranian diaspora in the United Arab Emirates in this way embodies a form of Iranian diversity that reflects both long-standing mobilities rooted in the history of the Persian Gulf region and more recent regional and global dynamics that have further diversified the already substantial presence of southern Iranians in Dubai.
Although Iranians who arrived in Dubai from major Iranian cities or from Western countries readily point out that Iranians contributed to the city’s development, they often have little understanding of who the earlier Iranian settlers were—namely, those originating from southern Iran.Footnote 2 They often speak of the “Iranians who built Dubai,” yet paradoxically, when speaking to me in passing as another Iranian, they say, “In Dubai, there are these Iranians you can’t imagine. They speak a strange language. I don’t know what they’re doing here.” In doing so, they caricature the Iranians from southern Iran, the first to settle in the city.
In Iran, as in many nation–states, regional identities are shaped and mediated through enduring stereotypes. The association of populations with specific territories—and the collective representations that result—commonly takes the form of dichotomies between Shiʿa groups (the majority, concentrated in central regions) and Sunni minorities (often residing in peripheralized and, in some cases, marginalized areas), or between Persians, who embody the dominant cultural norm, and Arabs, who are derogatorily portrayed as “locust eaters,” an expression that circulates widely among Iran’s urban populations. Within diasporic contexts, narratives of othering among and between Iranians can be reproduced, yet they also may be renegotiated and challenged through new encounters and processes of subjectification that arise from migration and living in sociocultural environments distinct from the country of origin.
This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and semistructured interviews conducted in Dubai between 2011 and 2014. It examines how social hierarchies shaped by nation-building processes in both Iran and the United Arab Emirates manifest in everyday interactions, individual and collective identifications, media and cultural representations, and in cultural initiatives undertaken by Iranians from diverse social backgrounds. The article contributes to the growing and increasingly consolidated literature on the Iranian diaspora by emphasizing the importance of diasporic connections within Iran’s regional environment, particularly through cross-border and transregional mobilities. By foregrounding links between southern Iran and the city of Dubai, this analytical perspective underscores the need to take subnational and regional dynamics—and, by extension, so-called South-to-South mobilities—into account when examining Iranian transnational and diasporic formations. The first section situates these hierarchies and representations within a broader historical and political framework, demonstrating how national policies—and, more broadly, processes of state formation and nation-building—have contributed to their shaping through mechanisms of inclusion, exclusion, and peripheralization. I then examine three sequences of Iranian diversity in Dubai, analyzing everyday interactions and cultural initiatives to show how social hierarchies and representations are reinforced, negotiated, and at times reconfigured in the migratory context.
State Identity Politics: Between Persianization and Emiratization
Nation–state building processes on both the northern and southern shores of the Persian Gulf have played a significant role in shaping migration movements and, later, identity politics and representations among different groups. Until the 1960s, it was only on the northern shore that Iran employed the notion of nationality as a means of managing its populations and territories. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Arab states of the Gulf (newly independent from British protectorate rule) also adopted laws defining nationality and the conditions for its acquisition.Footnote 3
Throughout the twentieth century, and despite local resistance, the Iranian state together with Iranian intellectuals played a key role in the shift from an identification system grounded in ethnic, linguistic, and tribal affiliations to one structured around notions of class and territory, thereby silencing or marginalizing other modes of identification. As early as 1925, Iranian intellectuals were expressing the following view:
To complete this [territorial and political] unity, the Persian language must spread throughout the territory, local differences such as clothing and other regional particularities must disappear, and feudalism (moluk ot-tavâyefi) must be abolished. The Kurds, Lors, Qashqā’is, Arabs, and others should no longer maintain distinctions among themselves, should not dress in their own manner, nor speak different languages. In our view, as long as a national unity in language, customs, and dress is not achieved in Iran, our political independence and territorial integrity will remain in constant danger.Footnote 4
Under both reigns of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–79), as well as under the Islamic Republic, the Persian, Shiʿa urban cultures have been highlighted as the main components of Iranian society, despite the fact that only about half of Iran’s population originates from Persian-speaking regions.Footnote 5 The majority now speaks Persian only as a result of state centralization and education policies.Footnote 6 In his efforts to construct the image of a modern and unified nation–state, Reza Shah Pahlavi sought to homogenize Iran’s cultural diversity by promoting the “Persianization” of national culture through a series of measures, most notably the imposition of Persian as the exclusive language of instruction in schools. Ancient Persia and Persian culture constituted political instruments for legitimizing the political power of the Pahlavis.Footnote 7 Despite other ideological differences, in the postrevolutionary period, and particularly following the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88), the Islamic Republic maintained and deepened the centralization policies initiated under the Pahlavi regime. This drive to consolidate power in the 1980s further politicized the ethnic and religious identities of minorities, such as the Sunnis of southern Iran and the Baluchis. Instruments of state control over peripheralized regions were not fundamentally altered but rather adapted to the specific characteristics of the Islamic regime—for instance, through the appointment of imams to provinces other than their own, or the deployment of Shiʿa clerics to Sunni majority areas, as I observed in Bandar Lengeh and in the small towns of the Larestan district in the southern part of Fars Province. Therefore, in the Islamic Republic, as under the Pahlavis, the building of the Iranian nation state has relied upon cities and city dwellers. As a result, geographer Bernard Hourcade has wondered whether contemporary urban dwellers in Iranian society are not “a new ethnic group” with their own habitus.Footnote 8 In fact, he observes, “to become a city dweller is to speak Persian.”Footnote 9 Indeed, the political and social changes of the second half of the twentieth century were accompanied by the increasing urbanization of Iran, evidenced by a doubling of the urbanization rate of 31.4 percent in 1956 to 68.4 percent in 2006.Footnote 10
This rapid urbanization has reinforced the dominance of urban culture relative to rural and peripheral areas. Major cities acquired higher-order institutions such as universities and industries. Literacy rates in both urban and rural areas have risen steadily over time, reaching about 88 percent at the national level.
Despite the ecumenical tendencies of the early postrevolutionary years, the Sunni–Shiʿa divide persists in Iran. Similarly, ethnic minorities such as the Arabs in Iran continue to experience marginalization under government policies. Speaking Arabic in schools in southern Iran is prohibited, even when the teacher is originally from an Arabic-speaking region. In other cases, conscript teachers from other provinces—who often do not speak Arabic—are assigned to these areas for the duration of their military service, which makes communication difficult with pupils who, with their families and in their daily lives, speak only Arabic until about the age of seven. This situation has strengthened the sense of Arab identity among Iranian Arabs, who continue to uphold their customs despite the predominance of the Persian language and the widespread diffusion of urban lifestyles across Iran.
These state policies have profoundly shaped perceptions among populations in Iran’s peripheralized regions and continue to influence relations between the center and the peripheries. Residents of these areas have long experienced a sense of exclusion, whereas inhabitants of major urban centers often perceive themselves as culturally and socially superior. Such hierarchies of perception, closely intertwined with regional stereotypes, are frequently reproduced and transposed beyond national borders, manifesting within Iranian diasporic communities.
Similarly, in the United Arab Emirates, the construction of a national identity after 1971 became a central concern for the newly formed state. The creation of the Emirati flag and national anthem, the designation of public holidays tied to national events, and the establishment of national universities during the 1970s were all key moments in this process. From the outset, the building of an “Emirati identity” relied on the valorization of local traditions and the imperative to forge a collective sense of belonging that transcended tribal divisions and transnational identities among Emiratis. Operating under the broader policy framework of “Emiratization,” several initiatives illustrate the exclusive logic underpinning public policy: government funds were granted only for marriages between Emirati citizens to preserve national identity and prevent mixed unions; preferential measures were implemented to support Emiratis in business activities, notably through the Khalifa Committee, which provided interest-free or low-interest loans; and public housing programs such as the Zayed Housing Programme, which offered free homes to Emirati families earning less than 10,000 dirhams (approximately USD 2,500) per month between 1980 and 1990. As a result, questions of citizenship and naturalization lie at the heart of the Emirati social order, shaping the country’s socioeconomic hierarchies.
The identity positionings and strategies of the various population groups connected—directly or indirectly—to the Iranian cultural space in the Emirates are therefore deeply influenced by state-driven identity and citizenship policies, by the national trajectories of Iran and the UAE, and by the evolving nature of their bilateral relations. Yet these structural constraints have not precluded the emergence of forms of autonomy, negotiation, and agency within these communities, as individuals and groups reinterpret, resist, or strategically adapt the identity frameworks imposed by both states.
Larestani Emiratis: Often from Here, Sometimes from There
A large majority of Persian speakers who have emigrated to Arab countries of the Persian Gulf come from the region of Larestan, located in the province of Fars. It is estimated that about 180,000 Iranian nationals from Larestan live in the Arab cities of the Persian Gulf, the majority of whom reside in the Dubai metropolitan area.Footnote 11 However, it is impossible to determine the number of UAE nationals with roots in Larestan because state-provided figures do not take into account former nationality or the nationality of one’s parents. But their presence is, by all estimates, far from marginal. After back-and-forth migrations between the two shores, the Larestani who were present at the foundation of the UAE Federation in 1971 were naturalized and became UAE citizens. Given the restrictions on UAE nationality that were established shortly after the state was created, those who migrated thereafter have been considered, like all other foreigners, “guest workers” by the UAE administration. They have consequently retained their Iranian nationality, and they have almost no chance of becoming Emirati even after years of residence in the Emirates.Footnote 12
The first wave of Iranian migrants to Arab principalities often sought to Arabize (or re-Arabize) themselves, including by Arabizing their Persian surnames. They did so because they wished to better integrate into the host society by emphasizing ethnic, religious, and linguistic affinities, and also because the policies of the newly founded state were aimed at forming a national identity common to all Emirati citizens. At independence in 1971, the members of the Larestani community, who had settled long before the discovery of oil, were eligible for the envied status of “national” on the same basis as the local Arab tribes. Assimilation went as far as negating one’s Iranian descent, as evidenced, for instance, by the refusal to speak Persian in public—even though the language was often transmitted within the family—or to associate with other Iranians.
The Larestani are named after the Larestan region and are sometimes referred to by the name of their town of origin—Evazi, Khonji, Bastaki, and others.Footnote 13 In the Arab cities of the Persian Gulf, and particularly in the Emirates, they also are known as “Khodmooni,” a Persian term meaning “of our own kind” or, more broadly, “those familiar to us.” The prominence of the Larestani presence in Arab countries is such that members of this community are identified by a term whose literal meaning underscores the kinship-like ties between immigrant and native families. The expression “Khodmooni” appears to be a linguistic outgrowth of this population’s migratory experience in the cities of the Gulf. Today, the two terms—Larestani and Khodmooni—are used interchangeably in everyday conversations, both as markers of identity and as a spoken language, including in the interviews I conducted. I therefore also use them interchangeably when referring to this population.
In contemporary Dubai society, the figure of the Khodmooni is omnipresent on television and in everyday stories about the economic success of families like the Galeh Dars, the Rayisis, and the Ansaris, among others. Although they express allegiance to the Emirati nation, Emiratis of Iranian origin frequently emphasize their differences from native Emiratis. They highlight their own open-mindedness and the greater efforts they have had to make to succeed in comparison with natives. A notable example of the representation of the Khodmooni in Emirati society is Um Allawi, a female character who appears in a highly popular cartoon called Freej (“the neighborhood” in Arabic). Broadcast in Arabic on several TV channels, the main characters of the cartoon series are four elderly women dressed in diverse and colorful Gulf garments, which denote their origins in another country or tribe. In each episode, the women are featured in a variety of satirical plots set in the city of Dubai. As Frédéric Lagrange highlights, these characters “allegorically represent elements of the modern Emirati identity.”Footnote 14 The first character is Um Saeed, a bedouin woman from the Bani Yas tribes, whose wisdom recalls the fact that the Emirates’ current reigning families descend from these tribes. Next comes Um Saloom, who speaks with an accent from the northern Emirates. She has memory problems, which cast doubt on her intelligence. Then there is Um Khammas, a woman of African origin, a singer at marriage ceremonies and a pearl fisher’s widow, who is fiery and rather vulgar in her manners. And finally, there is Um Allawi, a Khodmooni, the most emancipated and modern of the four characters, who is dazzled by computer technology and the gadgets she discovers in the new Dubai, a place that nevertheless astonishes and frightens these four inhabitants of the city’s old quarters. Although educated, Um Allawi speaks Arabic with an Iranian accent, uses Persian words, and often makes grammatical mistakes in the use of gender (a grammatical feature absent from Persian). She makes spelling mistakes when typing on her laptop computer, which never leaves her side. Um Allawi’s character is presented as an accepted, even valued component of Emirati society, but she is nevertheless distinguished by her accent, her errors in Arabic, and her modernist, occasionally condescending behavior—including her use of French words and her attempts at correcting her friends’ English on a trip to London which she organizes for the group (season 2).
In the eyes of Emirati society, Um Allawi is “one of us,” a Khodmooni. But she is also different, and typifies—with the exaggeration inherent in the cartoon genre—the Dubai Khodmooni (of any generation). She is also an allegory of the mother of numerous Emiratis of Iranian origin who speak Arabic better than their mothers and, in some cases, continue to speak Khodmooni at home. Despite being a caricature, Um Allaway nevertheless offers a recognizable representation of the southern Iranians who enjoyed a privileged social status in the early days of Dubai’s development, and who now seek to keep their marks of distinction in a shifting national context.
Freej raises questions about how the inhabitants of Dubai identify one another as citizens of a modern nation–state, in a context in which collective memory continues to emphasize individuals’ origins. These distinctions also are reflected between Iranians: representations of the Khodmooni in Emirati society—and particularly in Dubai—differ from those of other Iranians who arrived later from different parts of the country, notably after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Larestani are acutely aware of the image associated with their presence in the Emirates, and frequently mobilize it in everyday narratives. The character of Umm Alawi is not an exception, and the Khodmooni readily identify with her; she was often mentioned in the interviews I conducted. My interview with Mohammad illustrates this point. A 36-year-old UAE national born and raised in Dubai to parents from the city of Evaz, Mohammad was fluent in Khodmooni and had some understanding of the Persian spoken in Iran’s major cities. Nevertheless, he preferred to conduct the conversation in English.Footnote 15
My parents emigrated from the region of Evaz before 1971, and we were very well received here in the Emirates. To tell you the truth, the Iranians never paid attention to our culture, they always privileged Persian culture. Here, the Emiratis know us and they know that we are important, rich, and educated families. They give us a lot of importance here in the Emirates. Just watch the Freej cartoon with the four Emirati women, one of whom speaks with a Khodmooni accent: Umm Alawi. Even in this cartoon, she is considered an educated person who wants to learn to master high tech and to speak foreign languages! Everyone here knows the background of other people. For example, we know that someone’s grandfather has Iranian roots and is Khodmooni, even if he has an Emirati passport. As for Emiratis, you talk to people, and they ask you: “Are you Iranian or Khodmooni? They distinguish the Khodmooni from other Iranians.”
Second- and even third-generation descendants of Iranian migrants to the Emirates—most of whom have UAE nationality—claim to be primarily Emirati. They know, from the stories that their parents and grandparents told them, that in Iran the Larestani did not enjoy the same social status as Iranians from large metropolitan cities. They also know that it is thanks to the category of Khodmooni that they maintain the privileges of now-nationalized UAE society. Nevertheless, they often point to their differences from other Emiratis. B. Hammadi answers my question about his connection to Iran:
Frankly, I wouldn’t mind saying that I’m Persian, but I’m not Persian. If you ask me if I am Iranian or Emirati, of course I will say Emirati. I don’t have patriotic feelings for Iran, but I love the Emirates because I was born here and raised in this country. But it’s true that in the Emirates people know each other, so they know if your mother has Iranian roots or not … I have Persian friends with whom I go out occasionally to party and sometimes, I also watch Iranian films.Footnote 16
When I asked whether he stayed up-to-date on events in Iran, he replied:
Well, it’s still my family’s history, I must get some information. That’s normal! But, for example, we don’t celebrate Nowrouz. I know it’s the Iranian New Year, but it’s not our New Year. We celebrate Muslim holidays, and then the Western New Year, that’s all. Still, we’ve kept some traditions; for example, we always eat Iranian dishes at our weddings. We don’t eat too much of the food that Arabs eat. We also dance the fabric dance but not the stick dance like the Emiratis. My mother always celebrates Nowrouz, but me and my sisters sometimes forget that it’s Nowrouz! My mother still cares a lot about Khodmooni culture, and sometimes she laughs at us and says: “But you are Arabs!” When our families came to the Emirates, they also brought their culture with them. I am Emirati now of course, but I am also Khodmooni. I am neither Iranian nor Arab! When we joke with friends, we say that it is neither the Persian Gulf nor the Arabian Gulf but the Khodmooni Gulf!Footnote 17
These testimonies illustrate that modes of identification among the Khodmooni are fluid and context-dependent. Certain cultural traits are mobilized by social actors as signals and emblems of difference, whereas others are not.Footnote 18 These narratives reveal the ambiguity of Khodmooni identity, shaped by inclusionary and exclusionary measures of the national policies and societies of both Iran and the UAE. On the one hand, there is a desire to preserve the characteristics of a group whose cultural boundaries have long been shaped through transnational practices; on the other, there is selective appropriation of a newer category—national identity—that grants access to certain privileges while also producing new divisions. These representations must therefore be understood in relation to both the broader Emirati social order and other Iranian-origin groups. The discreet character of the Khodmooni community stems from the fact that its members rarely enjoy full social recognition in either of their political environments, whether Iran or the UAE. The group through which they define themselves is not impermeable but rather formed by social processes that both exclude them from and integrate them within prevailing structures. The persistence of boundaries that distinguish the Khodmooni from both Emirati society and other Iranian groups reveals the intertwined dynamics of exclusion and incorporation through which social categories persist, and also the enduring aspiration to remain Khodmooni: simultaneously “of you” and “different from you.”
Encountering the Other and Reimagining the Self: Iranian Cosmopolitan Subjectivities in Dubai
The geographic origin of Iranian migrants to Dubai began to diversify in the 1980s, after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88). Today it includes migrants not only from the south, but from the major cities of central Iran as well as those who settled there following onward migration from Western countries. Unlike Iranians from the south of the country, these groups do not display a strong identification with any particular ethnic or religious community in their discourse or practices, as they have lived in the dominant culture of Iran’s urban milieu. However, the feeling of belonging to a nation as an “imagined national community” (a belonging that nevertheless represents something different to each Iranian) is present in the discourse of these migrants to varying degrees and in varying forms.Footnote 19 This presence sometimes takes the form of exaggerated nationalism, and sometimes gives rise to negotiations that result from interaction with the “Other” in a migration situation as an experience of subjectification that can call inherited representations into question.
Beginning in the late 1990s and accelerating throughout the 2000s, this trend intensified, driven by the rapid expansion of the real estate sector and the growing appetite of Iranians to invest in it. At the same time, the tightening of international sanctions against Iran transformed Dubai into a key commercial transit hub for the Iranian market. This shift also was accompanied by expansion of the service economy—particularly in media, the art market, and other sectors that increasingly relied on multilingual professionals occupying skilled positions. For some of these individuals and families, Dubai’s emergence as a new economic center has been a chance to more closely connect with their country of birth. These Iranian migrants embody the urban individual described by sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, for whom the decision to migrate is prompted mainly by prospects for personal advancement.Footnote 20 They differ from Iranians from the so-called peripheral regions of Iran in their lack of communal character and their flexibility of self-representation, due to their multiple experiences of travel and migration, as well as varied personal skills.
Whether single persons of either sex or nuclear families, these Iranians have often had professional experience in their country of origin or another country prior to emigrating to the UAE. These newcomers flock to the high-rise towers of Dubai’s famous skyline, or to upscale residential areas, such as Jumeirah Beach Residence, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Marina, or Motor City. Fluent in English, they easily blend into the global character of these neighborhoods.Footnote 21 The “Arab” evokes so many negative and stereotyped images in the Iranian collective imagination that the first thing an Iranian from a large city where Persian is dominant, or from a Western city, may wonder is, “How do I live in an Arab country?” Not only are many of Dubai’s inhabitants (including Emiratis themselves) from different Arab nations, but a significant portion of Dubai’s Iranian population is made up of Iranian Arabs from the country’s south.Footnote 22 For many Iranians, this raises the larger question of “Who is an Arab?” The creation of the image of the Arab in Iran is part of a historic process to which both modernist intellectuals in the early twentieth century and state- and nation-building policies have contributed. Reza Zia-Ebrahimi also highlights the role of European Orientalists in creating distinct categories of populations. In particular, they set Arabs and Iranians against one another by supporting the idea that their cultures were incompatible, often establishing a hierarchy between populations based on linguistic criteria and types of cultural expression.Footnote 23 Iranian modernists later adopted the European Orientalists’ modes of thinking, explaining their aversion to any form of mixing between what they considered the Arab and Iranian cultures (and even races). They sought to preserve Iranian culture, which they deemed superior to that of the semitic Arabs.
Iran’s geographic proximity to the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and to Iraq reinforces the Iranian idea that only Arabs from the Gulf region are “Arabs,” whereas Arab countries in the Near East and the Maghreb are distinct from “Arab.” This view appears even in the official speeches of politicians: Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran, did not hesitate during his visit to Egypt in 2007 to distinguish Arabs from Egyptians, stating that, “the question of Arab and Ajam has always been raised in the history of both peoples, but this has never concerned Iranian–Egyptian relations and the images our peoples have of one another; Iranians think that Egypt is close to Iran and its culture.”Footnote 24 This is also the dominant view in Iran’s major urban centers and corresponds to a nationalist ideology that has developed there.
However, Arab–Persian and center–periphery representations of difference become particularly tangible in the context of Dubai, where it is no longer possible to imagine the Other from a distance: both groups are physically present and compelled to interact in everyday life. It is not uncommon for an Iranian arriving from Tehran or from a Western country to discover that his Emirati employer—whom he is expected to respect, given the hierarchical relationship of dependency between migrants and local sponsors in the UAE—is, in fact, Khodmooni and understands Persian. The case of Dubai—with its de facto diversity encompassing more than two hundred nationalities, including numerous Arab groups—illustrates how stereotypes and representations inherited from past experiences can persist or evolve across the varied social and professional contexts through which individuals encounter and negotiate this diversity in diasporic contexts.Footnote 25
This idea was expressed in several of the interviews I conducted among Iranians in Dubai. Moein,Footnote 26 originally from Tehran, moved to Dubai following the political events of 2009 and the Green Movement. Before settling in Dubai and joining the private sector, he had worked with several civil society organizations in Iran. He referred to the Arab–Persian question through reference to a common claim among Iranians—that Dubai itself was built by Iranians:
If you’ve come here to write that Iranians built Dubai, I must tell you that I’m not one of those who believe so. When I arrived in Dubai, I started to work with Westerners, but my best friends are now Emirati, Iraqis, Syrians … and we work much better together. The Iranians have also done a lot of damage to this country. They have borrowed millions of dirhams from the banks and left Dubai without repaying anything. I don’t think we need to always say that Dubai was developed by Iranians. The Arabs know very well that the Iranians look down on them, and they react accordingly. For example, in Ras Al Khaimeh where a large part of the population is of Iranian origin, as soon as I arrived for a meeting with a local (an Emirati), I would say a few words in Arabic—just the basics because I don’t speak Arabic. Then, sometimes the person would respond, “Oh, but I’m Iranian, too!” and I would realize that although he had never set foot there, he wanted to reveal to me that he had Iranian roots.Footnote 27
Mojdeh, who had lived in Europe, shared her own changing perceptions on the Arab–Persian question after living in Dubai this way:
I was living in Denmark before I decided to come here to work, about ten years ago. At first, I didn’t even smoke shisha [hookah]—I thought it seemed too Arab! Back then, I was working mostly with Westerners. But now, I realize how close we actually are to the Arabs. I didn’t see it when I lived in Europe or in Iran. When I was a child, I was told that Arabic was an uncivilized language. Here in Dubai, I have many Emirati and Syrian friends.Footnote 28
Ali and his circle of friends, whom I met during my doctoral fieldwork in Dubai, exemplify the internal diversity of Iranian migrants and the shifting ways they represent themselves in the context of everyday interactions in Dubai. The group consisted of young men between their early twenties and mid-thirties, most of whom had left Iran as children or teenagers. Having spent the greater part of their lives in the Emirates, they first met at the Iranian school in Dubai—an institution that follows the Iranian Ministry of Education’s curriculum—and later pursued degrees at the Iranian Azad university in Dubai. Some ended their pursuit of higher education after a bachelor’s degree, while others went on to master’s programs. Many of them trace their origins to southern Iran—Minab, Bandar Abbas, Lar, Gerash, Ahvaz—and others come from major urban centers such as Isfahan, Tehran, and Mashhad. All spoke Persian, although most also were fluent in Arabic. Those from the south additionally spoke local Persian dialects, and even Urdu or Hindi—languages picked up in childhood in Dubai’s markets and workplaces, enabling communication with Indians and Pakistanis. By contrast, the Tehrani among them understood these dialects and some Arabic but rarely spoke them. The cultural references of the group reflected their plural belonging. They listened to Iranian music and followed political events in Iran, yet they also were immersed in Arab and Indian popular culture. Within the group, humor and irony served as tools for negotiating differences. They reproduced familiar Iranian stereotypes—Bacheh Gedâ (beggar’s kid) from Bandar Abbas, or the miser from Isfahan—playfully reworking them in their everyday banter. Over breakfast on a field trip we took together, one of them joked: “Look at our life: we drink chai-doodh [Indian tea with milk], eat keymeh-parak [meat rolled in Indian bread], and watch Indian TV. We’re sometimes more Indian than the Indians—and we grew up with those foods!”Footnote 29
For these young men, the Iranian school had been more than an educational institution; it was a space of sociability where friendships were formed and multiple “Irans” were encountered. Their regular gatherings in cafés in Bur Dubai or Marina (Dubai’s neighborhoods), and even during our trip to Fujairah, were moments of political and cultural exchange. They discussed Iranian current affairs, debated the regime, and shared their experiences of protest—some having traveled to Iran to participate in the 2009 demonstrations, others having joined rallies outside the Iranian consulate in Dubai.
Ali, twenty-seven, had lived in Dubai for twenty-four years. Because of his limited English and the influence of his Iranian peers, he continued at the Iranian university. When we met, he was completing his degree but faced uncertainty: without a work visa, he risked losing his legal status. Unable to find employment, he extended his studies, accumulating degrees to maintain his residency. Similarly, Amin, his close friend from the same school, had studied political science in England and recently returned to Dubai in search of work: “My life is here. I grew up in Dubai and my friends are here. I don’t know much about Iran, but if I can’t find work, I can’t stay. That’s why I went to England, but it’s not easy there either.”Footnote 30, Footnote 31
Ahmad, twenty-five, was born in Abu Dhabi. He spoke Persian and chose the Iranian university to remain close to his circle of friends. Now running an architecture consultancy, he reflected on his layered sense of belonging:
I’m Emirati because my father lived here for forty years. He was close to the Al Nahyan family, so we were able to obtain nationality. We’re originally from Ilam in Iran, Kurdish and Shiʿa, but that didn’t stop us from becoming Emirati. My father applied for citizenship before independence. Still, I grew up in Iranian culture. I watch Iranian TV, and I went to the Iranian school. Sometimes I wear local dress, but not often. But this is my country—I’ve never been to Iran.Footnote 32
Shiʿa and Sunni, Emirati and Iranian, the men were all acutely aware of the social boundaries that separated them both in Iran and in the Emirates. Yet they shared a sense of “Iranianness”—redefined by migration and by encounters with others who were simultaneously familiar and foreign.
During Ashura, those of Shiʿa affiliation helped organize mourning ceremonies, distributed food offerings, and raised funds for the Iranian mosque before spending the evening with their Sunni friends at their usual shisha café. Differences in status and mobility were evident in their trajectories. On one side stood the young Emirati entrepreneur who enjoyed the privileges of citizenship; on another, the long-term resident forced to accumulate degrees to renew his visa; and a third awaited the result of his naturalization application, wearing local Emirati dress in the meantime, while his friends teased him—“Hey, Evazi, stop pretending to be Emirati!”—a reminder of both his origins and the enduring impossibility of being recognized as a “real” national.
Nima, the only Tehrani in the group—as he liked to remind me, establishing a discreet affinity with me, the Tehrani from Paris—had moved to Dubai after years of commuting between Iran and the Emirates for trade. During one of his trips, he met a woman from Tehran, and his business acumen impressed her father, who encouraged him to marry and settle in Dubai. He told me: “Before coming here, I didn’t even know what Larestan or Khodmooni meant. But Dubai is full of Laris, and I gradually started making Khodmooni friends!”Footnote 33
These narratives show how everyday encounters in Dubai produce new understandings of both the Other Iranian and the Arab Other. They foster a more flexible perception of difference—between Iranians from the center and those from the periphery, between Arabs from southern Iran and those from Tehran or Shiraz—without erasing the history and hierarchy attached to each origin. Although social and legal hierarchies continue to divide locals (Iranians naturalized as Emiratis) and foreigners (those with Iranian citizenship)—largely due to the privileges of citizenship and the near-impossibility of naturalization—the Arab–Persian divide can acquire new meanings in Dubai’s cosmopolitan setting. In this sense, Dubai becomes not merely a site of economic opportunity but a laboratory of transnational identity formation—where the boundaries between Iranian, Arab, and global identities are constantly negotiated.
Cultural Initiatives: Places of Social Affirmation and Distinction
Observing the initiatives undertaken by Iranian migrants in Dubai allows us to see how social hierarchies are reproduced or negotiated in a migration context. Emmanuel Ma Mung has stressed that migrants’ initiatives express their ability to mobilize resources to build their own migratory project that combines their know-how and abilities and expresses their degree of autonomy. Migrants’ actions reflect “distinction and differentiation on one hand, and affirmation and initiative on the other.”Footnote 34
These initiatives by Iranians in Dubai serve as spaces for the production of self-representations, narratives, and images that seek to define and present themselves to their peers and to Iranian communities both within and beyond their countries of residence. This works through cross-border connections, but also through social ties and spaces they create in their place of residence. As defined by Aihwa Ong, migrants are “manipulators of cultural symbols,” which they use to shape an image of themselves and the groups to which they belong.Footnote 35 The following example of a cultural initiative undertaken by Iranians in Dubai illustrates how its very design takes into account the different representations that various groups of Iranians have of one another. Participation in these activities itself constitutes a form of social distinction, forming new hierarchies among individuals who are part of a single national community.
Iranica is an international project aimed at creating an encyclopedia of Iranian and Middle Eastern studies that began well before the revolution, in 1970, by Ehsan Yarshater in the Department of Iranian Studies at Columbia University in New York City. The first version of this encyclopedia was published in 1982; the web version was launched toward the end of the 1990s and has continued to grow in the twenty-first century. This project has received major financial support from prestigious organizations, but also from wealthy Iranians, most of whom live in the West. With its increasing concentration of Iranian businessmen, especially those who have previously lived in Western countries, Dubai also has been targeted to participate in this global network by contributing to fundraisers for Iranica. In 2002, Mr. G, a businessman who settled in Dubai in 1995 after living in several places in the United States and Europe, agreed to become the Iranica representative for Dubai. At the time of our interview in 2013, he was managing an import-export business in Dubai. When describing the Iranians of Dubai, Mr. G seemed surprised by those he met “in certain parts of the city,” an implied reference to the area toward the Bay of Dubai where the Iranians from the south of Iran traditionally lived:
I’m not saying that they’re not as good as I am, but we’re very different. These are also very traditional families; some are very religious! Consequently, we don’t have a lot to share for making a community of Iranians here. I met with a few dozen friends in the conference room of the Iranian Business Council and suggested to them that we form a committee to raise money for Iranica. Most of the people I asked to collaborate on it opposed the project. They told me it was risky to take on this responsibility because the Iranian government didn’t necessarily support the Iranica project and it could create problems for the people involved. I was astonished by their reaction because this project is invaluable. I went to see another group of people I knew in Dubai and, with them, we established the association Friends of Iranica in Dubai.”Footnote 36
Gradually, the “gala dinners” for Iranica began to gain momentum. At first, the events brought together a few dozen people in modest hotels in the old part of the city. Over time, they expanded significantly, attracting several hundred participants and generating substantial support.
At first, the people of Dubai didn’t know what this encyclopedia was or that it was a project of Columbia University in the United States. For the Iranian community, it was something new compared with the usual events for Iranians in Dubai, where pop singers come from Los Angeles to organize concerts and dance parties and galas. Our gala had another level. It was a cultural evening with an expert who gave a talk about Persian and Iranian culture. For example, one of the guests gave a talk about “the evolution of women’s clothing in Iranian history.” People started to like these events. This is how we helped Iranica, first by getting to know a class of rich, educated Iranians in Dubai, then, by raising money, which was our second objective.Footnote 37
Although Friends of Iranica was finally dissolved in 2011 (according to Mr. G due to management conflicts between its Dubai officials and those based in the United States), these cultural and social activities, conducted by middle-class and affluent Iranians, created social spaces that included certain individuals and excluded others. The head of the Friends of Iranica reminded me that there have been a lot of divisions and “cultural differences” among the Iranians of Dubai. He mentioned that Encyclopaedia Iranica is in English and, consequently, can only attract educated people. He concluded by saying that the Iranica galas represented one of the rare scenes of the “Iranian elite” in Dubai, in contrast with the many concerts organized by singers from Los Angeles or by Iranians from the south, which he described as low-level popular entertainment. Participation in these events and activities led to strategies of distinction and social recognition that contributed to shaping the image of migrants vis-à-vis their peers, but also vis-à-vis Iranians inside Iran and in other countries of the diaspora.
The various communities of the diaspora judge and mutually define one another in relation to knowledge that has circulated about their formation at a given period of Iranian history. The Iranian communities of Los Angeles have been automatically labeled as wealthy, superficial, and uncultured, whereas those in Europe are looked upon more as intellectuals, and those in Dubai are reputed to be money-hungry nouveaux riches with no cultural interests. Although these representations can be explained by certain historical factors, they are also the result of stereotypes and normative discourses that fail to recognize internal diversities and the evolution of these communities and their host societies.
Conclusion
The analysis of the everyday lives and cultural initiatives of Iranians in Dubai reveals that although social hierarchies and representations are reconfigured through migration, they do not disappear from social interactions. Rather, they give rise to new forms of power relations and symbolic positioning among individuals. Strategies of distinction and differentiation do not simply replicate those of the society of origin; instead, the uncertainties inherent to migration open up a space for reflexivity. Within this space, actors reassess the images, categories, and forms of knowledge acquired in their predeparture contexts and rearticulate them through their migratory experiences, using these reinterpretations to make sense of and construct new social worlds. More specifically, the modes of migration and settlement of Iranians from large metropolitan areas, as well as those returning from Europe or North America, differ markedly from those of migrants originating from Iran’s southern regions, such as the Khodmooni, whose trajectories are deeply embedded in the regional mobilities, identities, and vernacular diversity of the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, although narratives of the “cosmopolitan Iranian”—often associated with migrants from major cities or with global professional and life trajectories—are framed around a desire to transcend local and national identities in favor of a global one, their proclaimed cosmopolitanism remains firmly anchored in migrants’ social and geographical origins within Iran or in other contexts that they have experienced in their trajectory. These latter experiences continue to shape the ways individuals distinguish themselves from other Iranians encountered in the migratory context.
Just as Aihwa Ong has shown in her study of Hong Kong immigrants in the United States, the practices of middle-class and affluent Iranians derive their force from the acquisition and strategic deployment of symbolic capital—forms of recognition and legitimacy that circulate across transnational spaces and international circuits.Footnote 38 Yet the arenas in which such capital is accumulated are not primarily economic or professional, but rather cultural and social. In these configurations, distinctions of taste, education, and moral stance play a central role in determining migrants’ symbolic status vis-à-vis one another: between migrants from Iran’s metropolitan centers and those from peripheralized regions; between them and those arriving from Europe or North America; between long-established residents and recent arrivals; and between those who align with, or distance themselves from, the Iranian state.
At the same time, the cosmopolitan outlook—as defined by Ulrich Beck, a “dialogical gaze” capable of apprehending ambivalence alongside difference—offers a framework for understanding how individuals across different groups and categories navigate these distinctions.Footnote 39 This gaze points not only to divisions but also to the possibility of shaping one’s own life and imagining forms of coexistence within contexts of cultural intermixture. Such a dialogical perspective is reflected in migrants’ everyday practices and representations. As cosmopolitanism operates through a cumulative and inclusive logic, it simultaneously produces new boundaries and renewed forms of exclusion. The analysis of everyday life and cultural initiatives of Iranians and those of Iranian descent in a context of hyperdiversity such as Dubai shows that hierarchies and social differentiation are not erased by migration, but reconfigured, generating new forms of social relations among individuals.
Amin Moghadam is Junior Professor and holder of the Chair Migration and Inequalities at the University of Poitiers, France, and a research affiliate at the Global Migration Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University.
