The unhomed Iranians in Canberra

Abstract

The group of Iranian migrants who are the subject of this study left Iran subsequent to the 1979 Revolution. This migration was in response to the post-Revolution regime's restrictions on societal participation, and its demands of the population to "perform" a new kind of Iranian-ness in their bodily and emotional comportment. Thus, the Iranians of this study, engaged in a kind of physical mobility that defines them as migrants because they felt that another geographical space would be a better launching pad for their "existential selves" ( Hage 2005: 470). Nevertheless, in Australia, also, they feel forced to calculate each move to portray the good Iranian, who is happy, and far from the Iranian middle-eastern typified image. If at home means that everything is unreflexive knowing how to behave and simply be, the Iranians of this study are unhomed. They perform rather than to be. Thus, they dwell in the purgatorial space between having a place to call home, but not actually being able to feel at home there. Having to perform an acceptable version of oneself all the time creates the state of unhomeliness, a state where one is not home-less, not without shelter, but yet not at home in one's own body, talk, and behaviour