Displaced, Re-rooted, Transnational Considerations in Theory and Practice of Being an Iranian outside Iran

The conditions and events leading up to and following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) contributed to a rapid dispersal of Iranians worldwide. Iranians who left Iran in the last 40 years have scattered to nearly every continent, creating a global population estimated to be between 4 and 6 million strong (Vahabi 2012). This population is heterogeneous along ethnic, religious, and class dimensions and includes individuals who identify as refugees, economic migrants, and international students, as well as those who are unofficial, variously termed irregular or undocumented. While Iranians reside in a notably broad array of locations, the majority has tended to concentrate in several key urban centers, including Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Hamburg, Stockholm, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, and Sydney. Despite the estimate cited above, population statistics and demo- graphic studies have been complicated by a variety of factors, including inadequate national counts, the continued unofficial status of undocumented Iranians, and the challenge of how to count second- and third-generation Iranians in diaspora, those children and grandchildren of Iranian immigrants who are often counted by officials as, for example, only American or only German, despite their multiple identifications or citizenships. This publication can be downloaded here: www.boell.de