Intersectionality, Class and Migration: The Politics of Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY,
CLASS AND MIGRATION
N
W OME
NIA N U.K.
I R A T H E
OF TS IN
AT I VES R A N
R
NAR MIG
MASTOUREH FATHI
THE POLITICS OF
INTERSECTIONALITY
The Politics of Intersectionality
Series editors
Ange-Marie Hancock
University of Southern California
Los Angeles
CA, USA
Nira Yuval-Davis
University of East London
London, UK
Over the past 25 years, intersectionality has emerged as an internationally
recognized approach to conducting research that takes seriously inter-
locking issues of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Building upon the
worldwide interest among academics as well as political practitioners,
THE POLITICS OF INTERSECTIONALITY will be dedicated specifi-
cally to intersectionality, bringing together theory with pragmatic poli-
tics to an international audience. Books solicited will draw insights from
diverse scholarship and research in social divisions, including (but not
limited to) inclusion/exclusion in global market relations, rural/urban,
and nomad/settled. The idea that more than one category of difference
is relevant to politics has been a longstanding if not always widely prac-
ticed claim in ethnic studies and women’s studies, respectively, and this
series looks to expand upon that existing literature.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14414
Mastoureh Fathi
Intersectionality, Class
and Migration
Narratives of Iranian Women Migrants in the U.K.
Mastoureh Fathi
School of Law
Royal Holloway University
of London
Egham, UK
The Politics of Intersectionality

ISBN 978-1-137-52529-1 ISBN 978-1-137-52530-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52530-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939106
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
To my mother Tayebbeh Akhlaghi and father Abbasali Fathi
Series Introduction: The Politics of
Intersectionality
The Politics of Intersectionality series has been edited by Prof. Ange-

Marie Hancock from University of Southern California, USA and myself
since 2011. It builds on the long-standing insights of intersectionality
theory from a vast variety of disciplinary perspectives. As a globally uti-
lised analytical framework for understanding issues of social justice, Leslie
McCall, Mary Hawkesworth and others argue that intersectionality is
arguably the most important theoretical contribution of women’s and
gender studies to date.1 Indeed, the imprint of intersectional analysis can
be easily found on innovations in equality legislation, human rights and
development discourses.
The history of what is now called ‘intersectional thinking’ is long. In
fact, prior to its mainstreaming, intersectionality analysis was carried for
many years mainly by black and other racialised women who, from their
situated gaze, perceived as absurd, not just misleading, any attempt by
feminists and others to homogenise women’s situation, particularly in
conceptualising such situations as analogous to that of racialised oth-
ers. As Brah and Phoenix point out,2 many black feminists fulfilled sig-
nificant roles in the development of intersectional analysis, such as the
Combahee River Collective, the black lesbian feminist organisation from
Boston, who pointed out the need of developing an integrated analysis
and practice based upon the fact that major systems of oppression inter-
lock rather than operate separately. However, the term ‘intersectionality’
vii
viii Series Introduction: The Politics of Intersectionality
itself emerged nominally from the field of critical legal studies, where
critical race feminist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw wrote two path-
breaking articles, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist
Politics’3 and ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics,
and Violence Against Women of Color’.4 At nearly the same time,
social theorist Patricia Hill Collins was preparing her landmark work,
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of
Empowerment,5 which characterised intersections of race, class and gen-
der as mutually reinforcing sites of power relations.
Both Crenshaw and Collins gave the name ‘intersectionality’ to a
far larger and more ethnically diverse trajectory of work, now global in
nature, that speaks truth to power sited differentially rather than central-
ised in a single locus. What could also be called intersectional analysis
was in fact developing at roughly the same time among European and
postcolonial feminists, including Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1983; 1992),6
Brah (1996),7 Essed (1991),8 Ifekwunigwe (1999),9 Lutz (1991),10
Meekosha11 and Min-ha (1989).12 Indeed, it seems that, in a man-
ner parallel to that which Sandra Harding characterises the evolution of
standpoint theory,13 intersectionality was an idea whose time had come
precisely because of the plethora of authors working independently
across the globe to make vastly similar sets of claims. Around the world,
those interested in a more comprehensive and transformative approach
to social justice—whether sociologists, legal scholars, feminist theo-
rists, policymakers or human rights advocates—have used the language
and tenets of intersectionality to more effectively articulate injustice and
advocate for positive social change.
The books in this series represent an interrogation of intersectionality
at various levels of analysis. They unabashedly foreground the politics of
intersectionality in a way that is designed to both honour the legacy of
earlier scholarship and activism as well as to push the boundaries of inter-
sectionality’s value to the academy and most importantly to the world.
We interpret the series title, The Politics of Intersectionality, in two gen-
eral ways.
First, we emphasise the politics of intersectionality, broadly con-
ceived; that is to say, we include debates among scholars regarding the
proper conceptualisation and application of the term ‘intersectionality’ as
part and parcel of the series’ intellectual project. Is intersectionality a par-
adigm?14 Is intersectionality a normative political (specifically feminist)
Series Introduction: The Politics of Intersectionality ix
project?15 Is it a method or epistemological approach? Is it (merely) a

concept with limited applicability beyond multiply marginalised popu-
lations?16 Our own idiosyncratic answers to these questions are far less
important than the open dialogue we seek by including them within the
scholarly discourse generated by the series.
What this means pragmatically is that rather than dictatorially denote
an extant definition of intersectionality and impose it on every author’s
manuscript, as series editors our task has been to meaningfully push each
author to grapple with their own conceptualisation of intersectional-
ity and facilitate their interaction with an ever-growing body of global
scholarship, policy and advocacy work as they render such a conceptu-
alisation transparent to readers, reflexive as befits the best feminist work
and committed to rigorous standards of quality no matter the subject, the
method or the conclusions. As editors, we have taken such an active role
precisely because grappling with the politics of intersectionality demands
our adherence to the normative standards of transparency, reflexivity and
speaking to multiple sites of power for which intersectionality is not only
known but lauded as the gold standard. It is our honour to build this
area of scholarship across false boundaries of theory and praxis; artificially
distinct academic disciplines; and the semipermeable line between schol-
arship and activism.
No less importantly, we emphasise politics to mean, well, politics,
whether everyday senses of justice; the so-called ‘formal’ politics of social
movements, campaigns, elections, policy and government institutions;
or personal politics of identity, community and activism across a broad
swath of the world. While this general conceptualisation of politics lends
itself to the social sciences, we define social sciences in a broad way that
again seeks to unite theoretical concerns (whether normative or positive)
with interpretive and empirical approaches across an array of topics far
too numerous to list in their entirety.
The second way we interpret the series title—simultaneously, as one
might expect of intersectionality scholars—is with an emphasis on the
word intersectionality. That is, the books in this series do not depend
solely on 20-year old articulations of intersectionality, nor do they adhere
to one particular theoretical or methodological approach to study inter-
sectionality; they are steeped in a rich literature of both substantive and
analytical depth that in the twenty-first century reaches around the world.
This is not your professor’s ‘women of color’ or ‘race-class-gender’
series of the late twentieth century. Indeed, an emphasis on up to date
x Series Introduction: The Politics of Intersectionality
engagement with the best and brightest global thinking on intersectionality

has been the single most exacting standard we have imposed on the edit-
ing process. As series editors, we seek to develop manuscripts that aspire to
a level of sophistication about intersectionality as a body of research that is,
in fact, worthy of the intellectual, political and personal risks taken by so
many of its earliest interlocutors in voicing and naming this work.
Currently, intersectionality scholarship lacks a meaningful clear-
inghouse of work that speaks across (again false) boundaries of a par-
ticular identity community under study (e.g. Black lesbians, women of
color environmental activists), academic disciplines or the geographi-
cal location from which the author writes (e.g. Europe, North America
and Southeast Asia). For that reason, we expect that the bibliographies
of the manuscripts will be almost as helpful as the manuscripts them-
selves, particularly for senior professors who train graduate students and
graduate students seeking to immerse themselves broadly and deeply
in contemporary approaches to intersectionality. We are less sanguine,
however, about the plethora of modifiers that have emerged to some-
how modulate intersectionality—whether it be an intersectional stigma,17
intersectional political consciousness,18 intersectional praxis,19 post-
intersectionality,20 paradigm intersectionality21 or even Crenshaw’s origi-
nal modes of structural and political intersectionality.22 Our emphasis has
been on building the subfield rather than consciously expanding the lexi-
con of modes and specialities for intersectionality.
It is thus with pleasure and pride that we invite you to join a global
intellectual endeavour—that of The Politics of Intersectionality series.
We welcome your engagement, submissions and constructive comments
as we move forward to broaden the world’s conversation in the direction
of social justice.
Given the above, this present book of Dr. Mastoureh Fathi is espe-
cially welcome, as it approaches the analysis of intersectionality and the
politics of intersectionality from the situated gazes of Iranian women
doctors living in the UK. As such, it examines the ambivalent con-
structions of classed, gendered, racialised identities of middle-class
professional women who are often excluded from more traditional inter-
sectionality analyses which focused on the most marginalised and disad-
vantaged women. It focuses on their classed identities, classed belongings
and the ways these classed gendered racialised belongings are performed.
However, it does it within an analytical framework which embeds these
identities in the social, political and economic grids of power in which
Series Introduction: The Politics of Intersectionality xi
these women live and how they are both included and excluded from
accessibility of different social, economic and cultural capitals.
The analyses in this book, therefore, are able to bridge the politics of
intersectionality with more culturalist approaches to class analysis and
highlight its importance in order for such an analysis not to be depoliti-
cised or dehistoricised as some of the more culturalist approaches to the
study of gender and class have tended to do.
In addition to its analytical powers, the book provides fascinating data
about the ways gendered classed belongings travel between Iran and the
UK, and thus helps us to decentre and enrich the meaning of class and
other social divisions beyond the Eurocentre.
Nira Yuval-Davis
University of East London, UK
Notes
1. McCall, Leslie (2005) “The Complexity of Intersectionality.” Signs: A
Journal of Women and Culture in Society, 1771; Hawkesworth, Mary
(2006) Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to Methodological
Innovation.
2. Brah, Avtar and Ann Phoenix (2004) “Ain’t I a Woman? Revisiting
Intersectionality” Journal of International Women’s Studies 5:3, 80.
3. 1989, University of Chicago Legal Forum 139.
4. 43 Stanford Law Review (1991).
5. New York: Routledge, 1990.
6. Anthias, F. and N. Yuval-Davis (1983). “Contextualising Feminism:
Gender, Ethnic & Class divisions.” Feminist Review 15(November):
62-75; Anthias, F. and N. Yuval-Davis (1992). Racialized Boundaries:
Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and The Anti-Racist Struggle.
London, Routledge.
7. Brah, Avtar (1996). Cartographies of Diaspora. London, Routledge.
8. Essed, Philomena. (1991). Understanding Everyday Racism: An
Interdisciplinary Theory. Newbury Park, CA, Sage.
9. Ifekwunigwe, J. (1999), Scattered Belongings, London: Sage.
10. Lutz, H. (1991). Migrant women of “Islamic background”. . Amsterdam
Middle East Research Associates.
11. Meekosha, H. and L. Dowse (1997). “Enabling Citizenship: Gender,
Disability and Citizenship in Australia.” Feminist Review 57: 49–72.
xii Series Introduction: The Politics of Intersectionality
12. Minh-ha, Trinh T. (1989), Woman, Native, Other: Writing

Postcolonialism and Feminism Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
13. Harding, Sandra [ (1997), “Comment on Hekman’s “Truth and
Method: Feminism Standpoint Theory Revisited”: Whose Standpoint
Needs Regimes of Truth and Reality?” Signs: Journal of Women in
Culture and Society 22(2): 382-91; p. 389.
14. Hancock (2007) “When Multiplication Doesn’t Equal Quick Addition:
Examining Intersectionality as a Research Paradigm.” Perspectives on
Politics, 5:1, 63–79.
15. Yuval-Davis (2006) “Intersectionality and Feminist Politics” European
Journal of Women’s Studies 13:3, 193–209.
16. Jordan-Zachery (2007) “Am I a Black Woman or a Woman Who is
Black? A Few Thoughts on the Meaning of Intersectionality.” Politics and
Gender 3:3, 254–263.
17. Strolovitch, Dara (2007) Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class and Gender
in Interest Group Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
18. Greenwood, Ronni Michelle (2008) “Intersectional Political
Consciousness: Appreciation for Intragroup Differences and Solidarity
Across Diverse Groups.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 32:1, 36–47.
19. Townsend-Bell, Erica (2011) “What is Relevance? Defining Intersectional
Praxis in Uruguay.” Political Research Quarterly 64:1, 187–199.
20. Kwan, Peter (1997) “Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, Class, Gender and
Sexual Orientation: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Cosynthesis of Categories”
48 Hastings Law Journal.
21. Hancock (2011) Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending
the Oppression Olympics. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
22. Crenshaw (1989) “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist
Politics” University of Chicago Legal Forum 139.
Acknowledgements
There have been numerous individuals whose input helped me with the
formation of ideas and development of arguments during my PhD and
post-doctoral periods that led to the formation of this book. The first of
many are the Iranian women who took part in the interviews and talked
to me for many hours.
I am indebted forever to Nira Yuval-Davis for her support, supervi-
sion, advice, comments, encouragements and criticisms to my PhD thesis
and on drafts of this book. I shall thank Molly Andrews for her con-
tinuous intellectual support to my research and scholarship. My sincere
appreciation goes to Anita Fabos whose initial training whilst I started
my PhD placed me in the right place to finish this and other projects in
the coming years. I am grateful to the illuminating and on-going discus-
sions that I have had with Ann Phoenix whose influence in my life has
been immense.
I would like to thank my colleagues and long-term friends in two
research centres I am affiliated with: Centre for Narrative Research and
Centre for Refugees, Migration and Belonging at the University of
East London. In alphabetical order, I like to thank Cigdem Esin, Jamie
Hakim, Aura Lounasmaa, late Siyanda Ndlovu, Nicola Samson, Corinne
Squire, Maria Tamboukou, Bahar Taseli, Angie Voela, Aaron Winter,
Georgie Wemyss and Tahir Zaman. I am grateful to the scholarship and
funding I received from University of East London, British Academy,
Funds for Women Graduates and British Sociological Association that
facilitated my research and impact.
xiii
xiv Acknowledgements
I am also grateful to my colleagues at Bournemouth University whose

support and constructive feedbacks and conversations made finishing
the book easier than it could have been: Jonathan Parker, Sara Crabtree,
Vanora Hundley, Hyun Joo Lim, Paolo Palmieri, Donya Rahmani,
Stephanie Schawndner-Sievers, Edwin van Teijlingen, Candida Yates. I
am grateful to Bournemouth University for funding my post-doctoral
position that gave me the financial security to complete this book.
I benefitted a lot from conversations with my dear friends and col-
leagues, Ali Ali, Nadia Aghtaie, Veria Amiri, Afsaneh Ehsani, Arash
Eshghi, Fataneh Farahani, Yohai Hakak, Shani Orgad, Edward
Rampersaud, Ali Sadreddin, Alex Simpson, Atlas Torbati, Ulrike Vieten
and Pooya Ghodousi.
Finally I shall thank my family members for their on-going love and
care in my well-being, health and happiness: to my mother Tayyebeh and
my father, Abbasali and to Ahmad, Bita, Mahdis, Maryam, Mehdi, Mitra,
Jeremy, Reza, Saeed, Sarvenaz, Taghi and Zari.
Contents
1 Class, Intersectionality and Iranian Diaspora 1

1.1 Iranian Women’s Employment and Class 4
1.2 Iranian Migrants and Social Class 5
1.3 Making Sense of Class in Migration: Co-constructing
Narratives 7
1.4 Iranian Parties, Concerts and Doctors’ Hubs 10
1.5 Religion, an Absent Theme in Class Stories 12
1.6 Outline of the Book 13
References 15
2 Intersectionality and Translocational Class 21

2.1 Classic Literature of Class and the Question of
Intersectionality 22
2.1.1 Marxism and Class 22
2.1.2 Status and Class 23
2.1.3 The Cultural Turn to Class 25
2.2 Intersectionality and the Treatment of Class 29
2.2.1 Situated Intersectionality 32
2.2.2 Power Relations and Intersectionality 33
2.2.3 Privileged Position and Intersectionality 35
2.3 Identity and Translocational Positionality 36
2.3.1 Translocational Class 41
2.4 Conclusion 42
References 43
xv
xvi Contents
3 Classed and Gendered Growing up 49

3.1 Educational Surveillance 50
3.1.1 Creating Ambition: Passing on Class to the Girls 51
3.1.2 Mothers and Class Surveillance 52
3.1.3 Lack of Choice or Destined Pathways? 57
3.1.4 Governing the Ambition 59
3.2 Normalisation of Pathways 60
3.2.1 Lack of Ambition as Deviant 62
3.2.2 Not Discussing Class to Construct Classed Identity 64
3.2.3 Embarrassment and Normalisation 66
3.2.4 Westernisation as a ‘Normal’ Pathway 68
3.3 The Making of a Moral Self 71
3.3.1 Respect 72
3.4 Conclusion 75
References 78
4 Classed Place-Making 81
4.1 Diasporic Spaces 82
4.2 Countries 85
4.3 Schools 88
4.4 Neighbourhoods 91
4.5 Spatial Class: A Conclusion 94
References 95
5 Classed Performing 97
5.1 Class-Coded Acts 99
5.1.1 Class and Performance: A Delicate Relationship 101
5.1.2 Performing Class-Coded Acts 101
5.2 Feminine Doctors: Femininity and Educational Capital 105
5.2.1 ‘Owning’ the Doctor’s Role: Being Authentic 108
5.2.2 Classed Performance and Morality 110
5.3 Compulsory Class 114
5.3.1 Imagined Images, Real Differences 117
5.4 Translocational Class Performances: A Conclusion 121
References 123
Contents xvii
6 Classed Racialisation 127

6.1 Being Racialised 129
6.2 Racialising Others 136
6.3 Racialisation in Class Construction 140
6.4 Conclusion 141
References 143
7 Classed Belonging 145

7.1 Foreignness, Power and Class 147
7.1.1 Is There a Glass Ceiling in British Society? 152
7.1.2 ‘I Make Here My Soil. I Make Here
My Country4’ 154
7.2 ‘Others’ and the Hierarchies of Belonging 158
7.2.1 ‘Deserving’ to Belong 161
7.3 Conclusion 165
References 167
8 Understanding Class Intersectionally: A Way Forward 169

8.1 Situated Understanding of Class 170
8.2 Intersectionality and Class 171
8.3 Social Locations, Relations and Localities 174
8.4 Complexity of Social Class 178
8.4.1 The Importance of Power 178
8.4.2 The Importance of Inclusion and Exclusion 179
8.4.3 Learning How to Perform Acts that Are Expected 180
References 181
Bibliography 183
Index 191
CHAPTER 1
Class, Intersectionality
and Iranian Diaspora
At the heart of this book is an in-depth analysis of class experiences that

at first glance may not be about class! The novel approach taken in this
book is intersectional—one identity category is analysed in relation to
processes that construct it in different ways. In this book, my endeavour
is to answer subtle questions that take class experiences to the next level
in an intersectional way: how it is possible to identify one’s class posi-
tion through migration stories? To what extent do experiences of being
an independent woman affect one’s understanding of social class in an
Iranian family setting? How does living in a particular neighbourhood
make one more/less British? Does having children (born in a migrant
family) create a sense of belonging or make one more alienated to British
society? These are important questions that are emerging in public and
policy discourses in today’s world where many countries’ foreign policy,
health, education and security policies, focus on migrants. It is vital to
consider what processes lead to migrants’ responses to alienating policies
that address them, remind them that they do not belong to host socie-
ties even though they are badly needed in these societies to run the very
same services that they are accused of damaging. This book is about class
analysis through everyday experiences of highly skilled migrants who
should all feel part of the British society, but, as will become clear, often
do not. My intention here is to bring back class experiences to feminist
analysis in order to better understand identities and positionalities after
migration by focusing on personal narratives and their intersection with
other elements of the lives of migrant women featured in this book.
© The Author(s) 2017 1

M. Fathi, Intersectionality, Class and Migration, The Politics
of Intersectionality, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52530-7_1
2 M. Fathi
Intersections of identity are at the heart of this book in terms of meth-

odology: how class is produced, recognised and utilised strategically as an
identity marker and how it is seen as a framework for understanding the
wider social context of Iranian migrant women’s lives.
Class is a salient aspect of everyone’s life, especially for those who are
hurt by it, as Sennet and Cobb (1993) put it eloquently in their work
on working-class American men in the 1970s, although class experiences
are not limited to working-class individuals. Stories about class provide
us with a bigger picture of the world in which we live, both about the
marginalised ‘other’, such as migrants, women and the working classes
as well as about the privileged individuals, such as the ‘white’, the mid-
dle class, the wealthy; the latter group tends to be left out of studies that
analyse the importance of class. Or it might be better to say that we, as
researchers, feel compelled to study the former due to the responsibili-
ties or the risks attached to study of the latter. However, there is another
reason for the absence of class: social class may not have seemed impor-
tant in the understanding of many social movements such as feminism
and anti-racist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
However, as Beverly Skeggs (1997a), a British scholar on class and gen-
der, puts it: ‘without understanding the significance of class positioning
many of the women’s movements through social space, through edu-
cation, families, labour markets and, in particular, in the production of
their subjectivity, could not be understood’ (Skeggs 1997a, p. 6).
The impetus in writing this book stems from my own classed experi-
ences of growing up in 1980s Iran and post-millennium UK as a grad-
uate student and a migrant woman. Despite efforts aimed at turning
children of my age into a classless generation, class had a strong pres-
ence for me, my siblings and perhaps for everyone whom I knew around
me in Iran. As the children of the revolution, or the dahe shasti (1960s)
generation, we all appeared to live similarly in our daily lives, turning up
every day for mass prayers at school, wearing the same dark-coloured
uniforms and reading the same books designed for both school and
extra-school curriculum. Despite Ayatollah Khomeini’s pronouncement
of Iran as a classless society (Nomani and Behdad 2006) in the 1980s,
the general understanding of and yearning for education, particularly
among women, undeniably shaped lives of generations of girls and boys
after 1979. Many women from working-class backgrounds entered uni-
versity or, rather, persuaded their families to let them study on the basis
that university was now considered to be an Islamic place (Khosrokhavar
1 CLASS, INTERSECTIONALITY AND IRANIAN DIASPORA 3
and Ghaneirad 2010).1 Health and education sectors were expanded

to provide a female workforce to serve female clients, a policy that was
encouraged by the government in order to segregate the sexes in the
public sphere. Although such policies shaped the workforce and drove
women to specific healthcare and teaching disciplines, they had profound
effects on Iranian society, influencing men’s expectations of their wives,
children’s understanding of their mothers, women’s sense of independ-
ence and their class position, both within the home sphere and in the
society. However, class experiences always remained a priori, a subject
that was perhaps not worthy of research, or not available to be explained
and analysed, perhaps even redundant as a marker of identity for women
in Iran, as their class positions were always dependent on their husbands
or fathers. These classed realities testify to the lasting, though constantly
changing, presence of class in Iranians’ lives.
Class analysis in this book is subjective, relational and is limited to the
interpersonal relationships among Iranian migrants at a particular time and
context (British society 2007–2012). It applies an intersectional frame-
work to challenge the formation of class in relation to gendered growing-
up, performing, racialisation, place-making and belonging. This is done by
focusing on the narratives that show the various categories and processes
which work together to marginalise, empower, sideline or spotlight indi-
viduals (although I do not limit my analysis to a binary distinction).2 I use
an analysis of intersectionality that falls neither into ‘anticategorical’ nor in
‘intercategorical’ analysis of intersectionality (McCall 2005), as it offers a
unique way that does not deny the categories themselves but to look at the
processes that help them to come to existence: categories such as middle
class, Iranian, British, English, doctor, migrant and so on. After discussing
the theoretical framework (Chap. 2) this book will delve into transloca-
tional components, processes and complexities of these categories. The ana-
lytical chapters include classed pathways of becoming an educated woman,
(Chap. 3); the meaning making of spaces in which one is living one’s life,
(Chap. 4); classed performances and practices, such as learning to perform
as a doctor (Chap. 5); experiences of racialisation, (Chap. 6); the sense of
being included or excluded in British society, (Chap. 7) concentrating on
the formation of privilege and dominance of class in the world and among
migrants (Chap. 8). As such, it attempts to highlight the role that power
relations play in the discussions around class, not just on a macro-level,
such as the power that theocratic government of Iran deploys in disciplin-
ing individuals, but at the level that governs, coerces and sometimes helps
4 M. Fathi
everyone’s life in all spheres and angles (Foucault 1982). Power relations
that are central to the micro-politics of these women’s lives exist in myriad
ways between individuals in their day-to-day experiences of inclusion and
exclusion, belonging and identity formation (Tamboukou 1999).
1.1 Iranian Women’s Employment and Class

In the decades after the Iranian revolution in 1979, due, among many
other reasons, to mismanagement, political corruption and lack of inter-
national interest in investment in Iran, the job market offered limited
choices, which affected women more harshly than men. Employers’ pref-
erences were to employ men, because women were likely to be prevented
from work by husbands, fall pregnant or refuse to be flexible due to
childcare responsibilities (Khosrokhavar and Ghaneirad 2010). This also
led to mass emigration of an educated young workforce.3
In the West, literature on classed identities mainly argues that choice,
decision making and possession of cultural capital are important in
determining one’s class position (Bourdieu 1984; Lawler 2008; Skeggs
1997b). However, this may not be the correct characterisation of Iranian
women, as career choices are limited for women in Iran. Women are
constantly pressured to choose professions that are ‘compatible’ both in
law and in society with women’s biological roles as mothers and wives,
such as teaching, nursing and medicine (Kar 1999)—professions that
could offer a form of employment to women. However, as will become
clear in this book, the medical professions are mainly populated by stu-
dents from middle-class families. Although higher education remains
an important concern of Iranian women, its use as a strategic tool to
change women’s lives and to negotiate their rights, such as child cus-
tody, were left to the discretion of Sharia courts in Iran (Keddie 2003;
Shavarini and Robinson 2005). Although Islamisation of the coun-
try was determinant in women’s access to higher education, especially
for those from working-class and more conservative backgrounds,
there are scholars who argue that Islam and the revolution had a nega-
tive impact in terms of limiting women’s participation in the labour
market (Nomani and Afshar 1997; Moghissi 1994). According to
Rostami-Povey (2016), large numbers of educated Iranian women are
facing gender inequality in employment due to the work sphere’s con-
tinual domination by men, and patriarchal policies. The ever-more pre-
carious nature of women’s employment, addressing class experiences,
has remained thus far a neglected area of research on women in Iran.
Increasingly, women are barred from studying certain subjects at univer-

sities, although, and because, for years they have outnumbered male uni-
versity entrants.
The small number of studies on socio-economic systems and social
status in Iran (Honarbin-Holliday 2013; Mehdizadeh and Scott 2011;
Moghadam 1993; Moghissi and Rahnema 2001; Nomani and Behdad
2006, 2006), on women’s political participation (Moghissi 1994) and
on female education (Mehran 2003a, b) indicate that classed experi-
ences, although important in a class-dominated society, remain a topic
with seemingly less priority compared to gender (Fathi 2015). An excep-
tion to this type of research is Poya’s (1999) Marxist analysis of women’s
participation in the labour market; however, although this is important
in analysing the hidden contributions of women to Iranian economy,
it does not address experiences of women at subjective level (see also
Moghadam 2002).
1.2 Iranian Migrants and Social Class

Like women’s employment, emigration was also perceived by the post-
revolutionary Iranian regime as a challenge to itself and a potential
source for the formation of an opposition outside the country (Fathi
1991). In later periods after the 1979 Revolution, waves of mass emi-
gration from the country coincided with social and political changes in
government structure, policies and laws, such the Iran–Iraq war (1980–
1988), President Khatami’s reformism and backlash against thinkers
and dissidents (1997–2005), and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency
and repression of student movements (2005–2013). The societal tur-
moil in post-revolutionary years added to the growing economic prob-
lems and high rates of unemployment amongst educated and highly
skilled young people. Growing number of Iranians from various socio-
economic backgrounds and political views sought employment, a life
and freedom in Kharej (mainly Western countries). The post-revolu-
tionary migration of highly skilled migrants, political dissidents, civil
activists and elites from Iran along refugee, student or skilled-migrant
routes has important implications for Iranian society and has contrib-
uted to a growing diaspora outside Iran (Bozorgmehr 1998; Nassehi-
Behnam 1991). There have been a number of motivating factors in
each era that encouraged various groups of Iranian citizens—mainly a
young and educated workforce—to leave the country; primarily reli-
gious, political and socio-cultural motives (Nassehi-Behnam 1991). The
6 M. Fathi
Revolution particularly caused an increase in the number of physicians

emigrating. Following the Cultural Revolution (1979–1982) and the
Islamisation of universities, vast numbers of physicians left Iran, in one
case resulting in the closure of a leading medical department at Shiraz
University. The majority of the Shiraz Department of Community
Medicine either emigrated or turned towards private clinical work dur-
ing ‘the cleansing’ of Iranian universities of ‘unfaithful’ professors and
students (Ronaghy and Simon 1983).4
Brain drain from Iran has been a topic of some scholarly debates
(Carrington and Detriache 1998; 1999), one that the Iranian govern-
ment denies (Chaichian 2011; Torbat 2002). In the post-revolutionary
era, the number of educated Iranian migrants who left Iran at some
point in the 1990s reached more than 150,000 a year from which 25%
had tertiary education (Carrington and Detriache 1998; 1999).5 There
does not appear to have been much investigation into why people from
particular occupational groups leave their country. However, immigra-
tion policies in countries such as Canada and Australia, which are among
the main destinations for highly skilled Iranian migrants, limit and con-
trol the inflow of migrants according to the countries’ specific needs of
particular occupational groups, and medicine has always been one of
the desirable professions.6 In the UK, the 2011 Census showed that the
number of Iranian immigrants increased to 82,000, with over 44% of the
women and 36% of the men going on to take an undergraduate degree
(Moghissi et al. 2009).
The migration literature also rarely addresses the lives of Iranian phy-
sicians, academics and dentists and the causes of their migration and its
effects upon them, despite a large number of them emigrating from Iran
every year. The official statistics about this are not available, and related
information on different websites is rather contradictory. However, pro-
fessional limitations such as the lack of resources and training at higher
levels, as well as restrictions imposed on physicians7 and other experts
and elites, are seen to be among the major reasons for their emigration.
Loefler (2001) proposes three major reasons as to why doctors migrate:
(1) to learn; (2) to seek professional satisfaction combined with the
opportunity to make a decent living; and (3) to escape political oppres-
sion and professional stagnation (Loefler 2001, p. 504).
Iranians have mainly emigrated to the USA, Canada, Germany,
Sweden, Britain, France, Norway, Australia, Israel and Japan
(Bozorgmehr 1998). Studies carried out about Iranians in countries such
as the USA (Bozorgmehr and Sabagh 1996; Bozorgmehr et al. 1996;

Shahidian 1999); France (Kian-Thiebaut 1998; Nassehi-Behnam 2005),
Canada (Moghissi 2006; Moghissi et al. 2009; Mojab 2010; Sadeghi
2008), Britain (Gholami 2016; Spellman 2004), the Netherlands
(Ghorashi 2008; Van den Bos and Nell 2006), and Sweden (Farahani
2007; Hosseini-Kaladjahi 1997) narrate a wide range of reasons as to
why Iranians migrate and how they live their lives after migration; how-
ever, all have political repression as one major reason.
The wealth of studies on Iranian migrants indicates a lack of focus on
class analysis. Mainly revolving around gender, education and domes-
tic violence, these studies specifically analyse sexual identities (Farahani
2006, 2007), religion, coping and settlement (Gholami 2016; Moghissi
2006), mental health (Dossa 2004), educational achievement (Mojab
2010; Sadeghi 2008), violence against women (Aghtaie 2015; Aghtaie
and Gangoli 2015) and community construction (Ghorashi 2003,
2004; Shahidian 1999). All these studies show strong class elements but
none has placed class at the heart of their analytical focus. For example,
Spellman’s critical ethnographic study of Iranian religious networks and
women’s gatherings in London shows the importance of class but does
not deeply investigate its effect on religious practices and the exclusive
networks that religious practices create (Spellman 2004).
The focus in this book is not on structural class analysis in Iran. The
Iranian economy, its changes and the analysis of different social classes
within Iranian society after the Islamic revolution have been thoroughly
addressed by Nomani and Behdad (2006). Instead, I place a transloca-
tional and intersectional analysis of class identity and the narratives to
unfold its components and processes of formation in relation to gender,
performance, space, race and belonging. In the following section, the
methodology of such narrative analysis will be detailed.
1.3 Making Sense of Class in Migration:

Co-constructing Narratives
This book on Iranian women doctors, dentists and academics8 will reveal
how meanings of classed identities were transformed after these women
emigrated from Iran, the ways in which these differences are narrated
and why stories formed in relation to particular people are of importance.
The social relations that define what class means to a particular individ-
ual, group or nation are told through stories, and such narratives play an
important role in telling us about identities. As Andrews (2007a, p. 2)
8 M. Fathi
argues, ‘when we relate stories of our lives, we implicitly communicate

to others something of our political worldviews, our Weltanschauung’.
Telling stories about class shows how it is constructed from real experi-
ences. We narrate stories to be understood, to communicate and to live.
Narratives are a major part of how we make sense of events, our feel-
ings and ourselves. These stories are intersectional and are rich sources
of studying different social positionings of gender, race, ability/disabil-
ity, sexuality, educational level and so on. As soon as we start narrating a
story, we take a position on who we are and how we want others to see
and understand us within and outside the framework of the narrative that
we tell.
The precise meaning of ‘narrative’ is not straightforward (Squire
et al. 2008). Narrative has a broad meaning (Craib 2004; Riessman
1993) and it can be applied to different things from a ‘spoken recount-
ing of particular past events that happened to the narrator’ (Labov and
Waletsky 1967 cited in Squire et al. 2008, p. 5) to the consideration
of everyday activities of life that are given ‘external expression’ (Squire
et al. 2008, p. 5). Elliot (2005, p. 11) proposes three main charac-
teristics of narrative: the temporal, the meaningful and the social,
and to these Bradbury (2016) adds ‘relationality’. As such, narratives
are important heuristic tools for researching people’s lives and, as
Andrews (2007b) argues, they are fundamental tools of communica-
tion and imaginations, although people and communities do not nec-
essarily hear stories in the same way or as intended by the narrators
(Andrews 2007b; Squire et al. 2008). This means that all of us create
our own situated meanings. Following this approach, my own interpre-
tation is an important aspect of the analysis of class narratives; I do not
just ‘mirror’ views about class but also actively co-construct their sto-
ries through the dialogues I have had with numerous Iranian migrant
women.
In these dialogically co-constructed stories (Bakhtin 1981) that
took place in the format of interviews, individuals interact with and
make sense of their stories in social patterns and together, keeping in
mind the present and absent, ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ audiences of their
worlds. During the fieldwork that I conducted in the UK to write this
book, most of the interviewees commented that they had never previ-
ously thought about my questions. Most were expecting questionnaires
and ‘some boxes to tick’ because, to them, social class was predominantly
based upon their household income and little else. I was interested in
stories that were told outside these boxes. Such answers clarified that
stories are told in dialogue (Riessman 2008), with a purpose and to a
specific audience (including me and the readers) (Bakhtin 1981) and
are intersectional (Andrews 1991). In these class stories, the elements
which made their narratives so particular to them were: meaning, inten-
tionality, temporality, relationality and audience. Rankin (2002), draw-
ing on the work of Ricoeur and Bakhtin, argues that narrative is the
synthesis of three elements: ‘narrative work’, ‘a narrative mode of con-
sciousness’ and ‘a narrative communication’. Riessman counts some
‘ingredients’ as essential for narrative: (1) the meaningfulness of the story
to the speaker; (2) the speaker’s decision as to why a story is relevant for
a particular question; and (3) for whom they are narrating it (Riessman
2008). The class stories that are narrated throughout this book have
been analysed using a similar method. The first ingredient (meaning-
fulness) is used more for thematic analysis. The specific approach of the
dialogic/performance analysis focuses on ‘who’ an utterance is directed
at and ‘when’ and ‘why’ it is made (Riessman 2008, p. 105). It ‘draws
on components of thematic and structural analysis, but folds them into
broad interpretive research inquiries’ (Riessman 2008, p. 136). In this
approach, the researcher:
joins a chorus of contrapuntal voices, which the reader can also join. To
put it differently, intersubjectivity and reflexivity come to the fore as there
is a dialogue between researcher and researched, text and reader, knower
and known. (Riessman 2008, p. 137)
Dialogical co-construction of meanings takes place in a larger social con-

text (Bakhtin 1981) and, as I will show throughout the book, my anal-
ysis goes beyond a simple thematic analysis: it is contextualised within
the larger political, cultural and social structures of the milieux in which
these women live their lives; for example, in many occasions, the notion
of class was tied to marriage, because this is a conventional way to talk
about the class position of women in Iran within heteronormative sys-
tems which decree that women should be seen as heterosexual married
subjects. On the other hand, revolution, migration and integration were
also important points of reference to social class that all require discursive
and contextual analysis. In the following section, I will explain where and
how I conducted the fieldwork for the projects underpinning this book:
10 M. Fathi
1.4 Iranian Parties, Concerts and Doctors’ Hubs

The Iranian diaspora in Britain is diverse in terms of religion, class and
ethnicity. There are no major Iranian communities anywhere in Britain,
which makes it difficult to conduct research with Iranians. There are
more Iranians living in large cities, and in London the areas of Harrow
and Finchley are known to host a greater concentration of Iranians.
These areas have Iranian (Persian) shops, selling a variety of Iranian,
Turkish and Lebanese products. Iranian restaurants are one of the main
gateways to employment for Iranian refugees with low English language
skills. Because of this, these migrants find it difficult to gain employment
outside these communities and they lack social capital. These areas are
not home to many doctors, dentists and academics, however. I could not
find my participants in these locations. Highly skilled migrants with mid-
dle-class salaries tend to live in predominantly white, suburban areas sep-
arated from Iranian and other migrant communities and council estates.
In studies carried out with Iranians living outside Iran, it is known to be
difficult to access Iranians precisely because of this reason: namely, their
sporadic settlement and lack of interest in congregating in one geograph-
ical area (Higgins 2005). Not many Iranians lived in the areas in which I
resided throughout all the years that it took me to write this book.
Purposive and snowball sampling were used to select women who:
(1) were physicians or dentists or held a Ph.D. degree9; (2) had emi-
grated to Britain with the status of immigrant and/or refugee within the
last thirty years (after the Islamic Revolution in 1979); and (3) considered
themselves to be Iranian.10 Snowball sampling is a viable option for research
with Iranians, as networks of trust are essential to get them participate in
studies (Higgins 2005; Khavarpour and Rissel 1997; Lindert et al. 2008).
I tried to expand my networks within and through my pre-existing connec-
tions to meet as many potential respondents as possible. I received numer-
ous rejections because of the relatively small community I was addressing
but, more importantly, I was seen as someone who might spread private
details about people’s lives to others in the diaspora who might know them.
This sense of distrust prevails among many Iranian communities.
I contacted the British General Medical Council (GMC), and, using
the Medical Register 2009, compiled a list of names and contact details of
female Iranian doctors who were working at the time in Britain. Needless
to say, this was a time-consuming process. It is probable that I did not rec-
ognise some entries due to people changing their names, and possible that
not all those I identified through their name would identify themselves
as Iranian.11 I also became involved with the Iranian Medical Society

(IMS) in London, whose president promised to introduce me to those
doctors who were members of the society; however, their emails to them
did not produce any responses. I decided that it was important to meet
people in order to convince them to participate (Higgins 2005). I also
attended every seminar, conference, event, concert, exhibition and film
screening where I thought I could meet and interact with more Iranian
people. Attending these events by themselves was not enough to gain peo-
ple’s confidence, and these events also did not produce any participants for
me.12 On occasions when I had no personal introduction, I did not usually
get a positive response from people I asked to participate in the research.
It has been found that highly-educated middle-class Iranian immi-
grants in the United States in the 1970s did not take social science
research seriously (Ansari 1977), and my experience forty years later has
been similar. I have been treated with disdain for my involvement in the
social sciences, both within my family and outside. I have found that
amongst Iranian medical professionals and those from a scientific back-
ground, social science research is not held in regard.13
This book is based on narrative interviews with 22 first-generation
migrant women, aged between 30 and 50 at the time of the interviews
in 2009–2010 and in 2012–2015. As I am younger than most of the
women I interviewed,14 I did not have the same knowledge of issues
relating to Iranian and British society. I believe that the experiences of
this group of women are important in the construction of the identi-
ties of younger women who were born during or after the revolution.
Plummer (2001, p. 128, emphasis in original) argues that locating peo-
ple in generational cohorts ‘is a more subjective sense that people acquire
of belonging to a particular age reference group through which they
may make sense of their memories and identities’. In choosing this spe-
cific group of women, then, I am aware of the importance of their nar-
ratives and how their lives have been shaped through different historical
moments. It was in the actual interviews and through the direct contact
I had with the women that the praxis of generational difference became
clearer. I realised how differently I was positioned in relation to the older
women in this group. The issue of generations, particularly the ways in
which they perceived me as a younger researcher in need of ‘help’, was
part of my analysis of their narratives.
Throughout this book, pseudonyms are used instead of real names,
and all identifying information such as the number of children they had,
their gender, etc. have been changed. Part of my ethical assurance in
12 M. Fathi
both studies was that the names of the cities where my participants lived
would not be revealed, hence these are also deleted from the narratives
and stories presented here.
1.5 Religion, an Absent Theme in Class Stories

Most of the research carried out on Muslim populations in the West,15
especially in the UK, has focused on South Asian populations such as
Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (Afshar et al. 2006; Brah 1992;
Moghissi 2006; Modood 1989, 1992; Moghissi et al. 2009, to name
a few). Iranians in Britain are not identified as a separate group and
come under the category of ‘other’ in national surveys such as
the census (Spellman 2004); however, research studies conducted
with Iranians outside Iran count them as Muslim (McCloud 2006;
Moghissi et al. 2009). All these cause some contradictions among
Iranians outside Iran in defining themselves in the West. It would be
wrong to assume that women of Muslim origin living in the diaspora
can all fit neatly into specific categories such as ‘Muslim’ or ‘Iranian’
(see Moghissi 1999, 2006) because many Iranian women who
live outside Iran are not practising Muslims (Gholami 2016).
Iran is an Islamic country and Iranians’ lives are shaped to varying
degrees by religion (Shahidian 1999). The effect of religion on people’s lives
is no less than that of other factors such as class, gender and race. Despite
the importance of religion in the formation of Iranian women’s identi-
ties, these 22 women, who were all born into Muslim families, hardly ever
referred to the notion of religion and its role in their lives whilst talking to
me. Consequently, this book does not address religion as an identity cat-
egory for social class; that is another project. As Yuval-Davis (2009) argues,
some intersections are more important in certain contexts than others; in
the current atmosphere, which places emphasis on Islam as a unitary identity
of migrants in Europe and presents them as problematic, perhaps religion is
seen as taking priority over class identities. I am particularly interested, how-
ever, in how those unexplored aspects of identities are changing within these
turbulent atmospheres. I have often been asked the question, ‘How can you
use Western-based theories to discuss Iranian subjects?’ My answer relates
to the above discussion—the development of theories and the application
of them to different contexts does not create binary divisions. As West and
non-West were constructed on the basis of power relations, capitalism and
other discourses, these theories can be applied similarly in different contexts.
1.6 Outline of the Book

Chapter 2, ‘Intersectionality and Translocational Class’, outlines the analyti-
cal framework of the book. It comes with a caveat that class is an important
element in intersectionality studies and needs to be brought back to the
analysis of identities and positionalities. Chapter 3, ‘Classed and Gendered
Growing-up’, formulates construction of gendered identities of women
doctors or khanoom doctor ha, in this book. It analyses how class is trans-
mitted from parents to children by instilling the ideas around becoming
doctors in the pursuit of making class a trajectory and an inherited capital.
This is followed by Chap. 4, ‘Classed Place-making’, which discusses the
construction of spaces and places in class identities. This spatial aspect of
class is vital to the study of class as it shows the processes of identity for-
mation within specific locations. As such it offers a novel analysis of deci-
sion making about places in terms of country, neighbourhoods, schools
and work spaces that have class connotations in various migratory and
settlement levels. Chapter 5, ‘Classed Performing’, outlines the impor-
tance of performance in constructing classed identity as a woman doctor
both in Iran and in the UK. The chapter relies on Judith Butler’s concept
of performativity, which contends performative acts are constantly remak-
ing the self. In Chap. 6, ‘Classed Racialisation’, racialised processes will be
discussed that are important in the construction of class. They show how
these women migrants use imperialist views towards migration and spe-
cific migrants to create ‘the Other’ and so actively to place themselves in a
superior position by constantly comparing themselves to white middle-class
English and opposed to ‘other migrants’. Chapter 7, ‘Classed Belonging’ is
an exploration of the sense of belonging, placing all the intersectional cat-
egories discussed in the preceding chapter into a core element of identity
construction. This chapter uses the theory of the politics of belonging by
Nira Yuval-Davis (2011a, b, c) and shows that fluidity of feelings of belong-
ing-ness and unbelonging-ness at the same time depending on the specific
context within which migrants are located in. Chapter 8, ‘Understanding
Class Intersectionally: A Way Forward’, offers a conclusion to the book and
emphasises the importance of attending to the relational workings of ‘privi-
lege’ within matrices of power relation and subjugation of marginal posi-
tions that are often presented as victims, subjects of racism and xenophobia.
Overall, this book is a small contribution to making social class a vis-
ible identity category in the studies of intersectionality and privileged
migrants as present in the relations of power in creating desirable and
undesirable migrants.
14 M. Fathi
Notes
1. Please see Chap. 3 and Fathi (2016) for a full discussion of the pathways
of female education in Iran.
2. The other three complexities that McCall introduces are ‘intracategorical’
‘intercategorical’ and ‘anti-categorical’, see Chap. 2 for a discussion of
approaches to intersectional analysis.
3. International Monetary Fund (IMF) published several reports on
brain drain from OECD countries in all of which Iran ranks the high-
est in terms of the number of highly educated migrants. See: http://
www.rferl.org/a/1051803.html, http://www.bbc.com/persian/
iran/2011/02/110214_l28_250_thousand_iranian_specialists_america.
shtml, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/wp98102.pdf.
4. The Ministry of Higher Education reformed the curricula of medical
schools, which were now based upon ‘Islamic values and beliefs’. By law,
only women could become obstetricians and gynaecologists after the
Revolution (Tavakol et al. 2008).
5. The Iranian government’s approach to the issue of a brain drain is con-
tradictory. In May 2010, the Iranian Deputy Education Minister, Mehdi
Nejad Noori declared that the phenomenon of ‘a brain drain does not
exist in Iran at all’. He argued that instead of a brain drain, there was
gardesh e maghz ha (brain circulation). Nejad Noori argued that one of
the government policies on the issue of ‘brain circulation’ has been to
increase the number of places for postgraduate studies, to encourage
young graduates to remain in Iran. Earlier, in March 2010, the Deputy
Minister of Education had announced that a substantial number of those
who study abroad return to Iran after they finish their studies and train-
ing. He announced that since the Revolution, out of 12,000 students
who were sent abroad on government scholarships, only 400 (3%) have
not returned. He also reported that the government is not keen on send-
ing students to Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom
because those countries do not have a humanitarian attitude to Iranian
students (BBC Persian Service, 9 March 2010).
6. In 2008, Canada released a list of occupations which were ‘eligible’ for immi-
gration. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/tool/tool_06.asp.
7. For example, in 2008, two physicians were arrested for providing infor-
mation about the treatment of HIV/Aids in Iran. http://news.bbc.
co.uk/1/hi/7519233.stm.
8. In Iran, doctors and dentists have the same status and use the same title,
‘doctor’, unlike in the UK. The inclusion of women of different profes-
sions was to expand the sample size.
9. Academics are called ‘doctors’ in Iran and have the same social status as
doctors and dentists.
10. One woman who was introduced in a seminar as a potential participant spoke

to me in Farsi but said that she did not identify herself as an Iranian, although
she was pointed out to me as Iranian. This made me realise that it was impor-
tant to ask whether women characterised themselves as Iranian or not.
11. Spellman (2004) refers to how some Iranians change their names in
Britain to reduce the effects of racism in relation to their ‘foreign’ names.
Afshar (2007) referred to a similar tendency, too.
12. At a concert, I started talking to an Iranian woman in the in the interval
about the music. She was in her sixties and had come to England 40 years
ago. I thought she could be a suitable interviewee, so I introduced myself
and asked if I could have her contact details. She gave them to me at the
time. I only met her for a few minutes and despite the fact that I attempted
to contact her on numerous occasions, she never responded to me.
13. Similarly, other research studies also indicate that there has been a lack
of respect among Iranians for social science research in Canada and USA
(Chaichian 1997; Hoffman 1989).
14. The youngest interviewee was two years older than me and the others
were many more years older.
15. I use the words Western and Westernised with capital W to indicate the
social construction of these terms. I believe that using them with small
letters would present them as neutral and natural.
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CHAPTER 2
Intersectionality and Translocational Class
This book is about the way in which subjective constructions of class

can be brought to attention by employing an intersectional and translo-
cational approach through analysing the routes that gender, culture and
religion, locality and performativity co-constitute each other. Social class
and classed experiences are the condition of many inequalities. They do
not happen in a vacuum, but in intersection with other locations that
in themselves create and adhere to difference and to the state of being
and becoming. It is important to address class in the study of inequal-
ity, using Fanon’s line of thinking on colonial encounter, i.e. in cases
in which certain class positioning becomes a resource for pleasure and
power (he talks about race and ethnicity), this becomes more dominant
in the dynamics that create the Other. This chapter lays out the theo-
retical framework behind the analysis of migrant women’s narratives of
class. The first part of the chapter shows the inadequacy of applying clas-
sical theories of class to the analysis of migrants’ accounts. The second
part identifies the contributions in intersectionality and highlights the
importance of studying class within ‘the field of intersectionality studies’
(Cho et al. 2013). The third part highlights the need to address subjec-
tive class in order to understand the nuanced experiences of hierarchi-
cal and relational class in the lives of migrants and how such absence of
study of migrants has turned class into a priori and a redundant subject
but the one that seriously limits migrants’ chances of integration, citizen-
ship and belonging.

of Intersectionality, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52530-7_2
22 M. Fathi
This book is not a Marxist or a Weberian analysis of social class. It

does not even offer a Bourdieusian approach to the study of class. The
reason for this is that all these theories of class, status and distinction
lack an attention to gender, race, belonging and, to a degree, space.
In other words, they do not use intersectional thinking in approach-
ing the issues around inequality or difference that could potentially give
us a tool in our move towards a just future (Collins and Bilge 2016, p.
204). Although the term ‘intersectionality’ was coined relatively recently
(Crenshaw 1989) and major theories of class were written long before
this, inequalities on the basis of race, gender and class were evident in the
work of Marx, Weber and Bourdieu, and some proponents of class theo-
ries have also pointed out the necessity for a renewed attention to class
that takes into account other factors other than class (Crompton 1996;
Devine and Savage 2005; Reay 1998). In the first section of this chap-
ter, I will touch on these three theorists briefly in exploring how one can
learn from each in analysing class.
2.1 Classic Literature of Class and the Question

of Intersectionality
2.1.1 Marxism and Class

Relying on a ‘macro-social theory’, Marxism specifies the relationship
between the structures of inequality (Devine and Savage 2005, p. 15).
For Marx, material productive forces are the impetus in the development
of social order. On the basis of this view, Marx believes that classes are the
fundamental organisational structure of society (Marx and Engels [1888]
1967). Marx argues that societies are divided into two opposing classes.
In the Communist Manifesto, with Engels, he wrote: ‘Society as a whole
is splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly
facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat’. Although later, in the
third edition of Capital, Marx mentions three different classes: ‘the own-
ers merely of labour power, owners of capital and landowners’ (Marx and
Engels 1967, p. 862). For Marx, access to the means of production and
the products thereof is the factor that creates inequality. He argues that
state power has a determining effect on economic power. He contends
that bourgeois ideology legitimises the inequalities by disguising the pro-
cesses of production, distribution and exchange as non-political (Marx
and Engels 1967); hence, class is seen as a form of social force because,
2 INTERSECTIONALITY AND TRANSLOCATIONAL CLASS 23
he argues, all history is ‘the history of class struggle’ (Marx and Engels
1967). Marx does not only provide a description of the multiple social
classes, but is also concerned with how these classes transform the socie-
ties themselves (Crompton 2008). An important aspect of Marx’s contri-
bution to the concept of class is the notion of ‘class consciousness’. He
argues that class consciousness is the process by which a ‘class in itself’
becomes active and eventually makes a ‘class for itself’. This means that it
is the individual’s consciousness that leads them to form alliances that can
eventually change their history. Marx states that ‘it is not the conscious-
ness of men (and women) that makes their being but, [conversely], it is
their social being that determines their consciousness’ (Marx 1962 cited
in Crompton 2008, p. 30). Class consciousness (the subjective aspect of
class) is considered to be different from objective characteristics of class.
Marx’s views on class, although influential on interpretations of the une-
qual distribution of power in modern industrial societies, are lacking with
regard to other forms of inequality such as race, gender and sexuality etc.
We now know that women in general are more disadvantaged than men
because of the historical and contemporary forms of patriarchy that posi-
tion them in more subservient positions. Similarly, other social categories
have determining effects on how class is experienced by various groups
of people on a global perspective. An obvious and simple example of
the lack of intersectional analysis is in a migrant and non-migrant work-
force in factories based in a Western metropolis, where migrant workers
are employed and paid under the minimum wage while the citizenship
rights of non-migrant workers protect them from lower wages and fur-
ther exploitation. Furthermore, consciousness of a class position does
not automatically define belonging to a particular class; for example, as
will be shown throughout this book, some may characterise themselves
as middle class but are not recognised as middle class by that society. As
such, knowing and acknowledging being part of a specific class group is
not enough. Membership depends on a degree of recognition from the
social groupings one has exposure to.
2.1.2 Status and Class

For Weber, unlike Marx, a person’s class position is not based on his/
her relationship to and control of the means of production, but is
instead assessed through the life-chances that the market brings to the
individual. As Gerth and Mills (1948, p. 181) argue, class for Weber
24 M. Fathi
is represented by the conditions of the commodity or labour markets.

Weber differentiates between ‘classes’ and ‘status groups’. For Weber,
social class means having access to resources. As Gerth and Mills (1948,
p. 181) maintain, in some circumstances status groups can act as sources
which regulate entitlements to material reward. Weber contends that the
ownership of stocks of capital, the ability to work and high levels of skill
are crucial to the labour and capital markets (Weber 1968). Different
occupational groupings earn different levels and types of material and
symbolic rewards (or life-chances) (Weber 1968). Status groups associ-
ate themselves with others with whom they share common cultures, and
their participation in these communities gives them a sense of identity.
Performances are part of these community participations. Most relevant
to my discussion about class performances is that status is related to ‘life-
style’ as ‘the totality of cultural practices such as dress, speech, outlook
and bodily dispositions’ (Turner 1988, p. 66 cited in Crompton 2008,
p. 35) that are related to prestige (honour). These bodily dispositions,
as Weber discusses, allow one status group to form a monopoly amongst
professionals; for example, doctors are represented as practising altru-
ism rather than exploiting others in labour markets, which is part of their
professional prestige (Sullivan 1999). Similarly, Savage et al. (1992) in
their research in Britain, argue that the idea of ‘knowledge worker’ or
the category ‘intellectual’ is related to the concept of cultural capital (see
below) and certain consumption patterns which link to the concept of
prestige. Weber argues that while class is concerned with the produc-
tion of goods, status is concerned with their consumption. Prestige or
social ranking is argued as being one dimension of the status concept
(Crompton 2008). ‘[The] Weberian concept of status has three dimen-
sions: (a) referring to actual prestige groupings or consciousness commu-
nities; (b) more diffuse notions of “lifestyles” or “social standing” (these
first two aspects will obviously overlap to a considerable extent); and
(c) non-market-based claims to material entitlements or “life chances”’
(Crompton 2008, p. 96). Weber explores the ways in which, in the
Western world, professions are defined by specific forms of occupation
(Weber 1968). For Weber, the opportunities that the market brings to an
individual and to their relationship with institutions are the main factors
that determine a person’s class position.
Relationships and affiliations to institutions continue to form the
basis of judgements and evaluations; for example, in Weber’s view, medi-
cal professions are seen to carry a particular prestige or honour to the
extent that some have called them ‘the model’ for all other professions
(Friedson 1984, 1988). Again, in this approach it is not clear as to how
prestige would be assessed when the concept of prestige varies in differ-
ent societies. In relation to Iranian migrants, what counts as prestige in
Iran cannot be easily translated into British culture, as prestige is formed
within gendered relations and dynamics of aabroo or reputation as well
as the historical and familial relationships between families and groups in
Iranian society.
2.1.3 The Cultural Turn to Class

Most of the studies about class since the start of the twenty-first cen-
tury have focused on the works of Pierre Bourdieu (Bettie 2003; Bottero
2004; McDonald et al. 2005; Savage et al. 2013; Sayer 2005). As Savage
argues, the growing economic inequalities in the UK since the 1980s as
shown in the work of Piketty, have brought discussions on class on the
table once more.
The class identities of the women in this book are related both to
financial and non-financial elements such as education, British hegem-
onic culture and taste formed and understood within power relations,
as was mostly discussed by Bourdieu (1985). For Bourdieu ‘class divi-
sions are defined not by differing relations to the means of production
but by differing conditions of existence as well as differing systems of
dispositions produced by differential conditioning, and differing endow-
ments of power or capital (Brubaker 1985, p. 761 cited in Crompton
2008, p. 100). Symbolic rather than economic relations are important
in Bourdieusian class analysis, and, of course, symbolic relations have
been pivotal in extending feminist thinking (Adkins and Skeggs 2005).
However, Bourdieu’s lack of attention to feminist theory and his main
concern with inequality in operations of class formation has been a major
criticism of his work. Nevertheless, the concepts developed in his semi-
nal work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984)
provide a useful framework to the study of class in this intersectional
approach: field, capital and habitus. Devine and Savage (2005) argue that
field has some characteristics of social structure in stratification theory. A
field, as Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, p. 16) state, can be expressed by
a set of ‘objective, historical relations between positions anchored in cer-
tain forms of power (or capital)’. Power relations are relative in a social
field. As such, everyone’s position is defined in relation to all others in
26 M. Fathi
the same field and the position is not static but always in flux. Depending
on the situation, a person can be in a position of power, yet can be posi-
tioned as less powerful in a different situation. Bourdieu understands this
relational power as a form of gravity existing in the social field (Bourdieu
and Wacquant 1992). He talks of fields as:
…structured spaces of positions (or posts) whose properties depend on

their position within these spaces and which can be analysed independently
of the characteristics of their occupants. (Bourdieu 1993, p. 72)
As people experience mobility between fields1 they become aware of

the strategies of their movements, ethics and tactics (Bourdieu 1984).
In Sayer’s words, for Bourdieu, ‘people’s access to particular practices,
including jobs, depends on their location relative to others within the
social field, be it one of dominance or subordination’ (Sayer 2011,
p. 11). Habitus consists of a set of historical relations ‘deposited’ within
individuals’ bodies in the form of mental and corporeal schemata of
perception, appreciation and action (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992,
pp. 16–19). Habitus, Bourdieu argues, is a structuring mechanism that
operates within agents, though it is neither strictly individual nor in itself
fully determinative of conduct. Bourdieu believes that habitus can be
‘creative’, but as it is a product that is embodied within social structures
it is limited within its own disciplines.
Field and habitus are relational concepts and their functions depend on
each other. Field is not merely a placid system of spaces that exists in order
to be filled by individuals who ‘act’. Habitus is also meaningless when it is
considered without the structure within which agents can act in the field;
thus, these two notions are related to each other and cannot function with-
out one another. Gender, for example, can be understood as a habitus
where it cannot be understood without the field (the context) within which
a man or a woman acts, i.e. Iranian society or a specific situation in a family.
The third concept in Bourdieu’s analysis of class is capital, which
may be economic, cultural, social or symbolic. Briefly, economic capi-
tal refers to the ownership of assets or goods and determines access to
resources. Cultural capital refers to the non-economic aspects of social
class. It is a form of knowledge that is accumulated throughout a life-
time and is dependent on diffuse education, family education and insti-
tutional education (Johnson 1993). Social capital refers to an individual’s
access to networks, communications and membership in groups which
bring the individual benefits. Symbolic capital means that for all three
(economic, cultural and social) capitals to be valid they need to be recog-

nised within a social field. Bourdieu (1987, p. 12) argues that categories
of social class are not distinctly drawn and their meanings are depend-
ent on their association with each other. In Distinction (1984), he uses
class as a generic name for social groups, and differentiates between them
by their conditions of existence and their corresponding dispositions. In
fact, Bourdieu’s approach (which is not dissimilar to Weber’s) to explor-
ing the processes of social differentiation focuses on occupational groups
and consumption patterns.
The three major approaches to class analysis outlined above are use-
ful in different ways. Marx’s analysis of social structure helps to unravel
the unequal opportunities for people in different occupations and to
explain how these structural inequalities make social mobility impossible
in practice. Weber’s approach to market relations and professionalism indi-
cates the differences between the economic and cultural aspects of class.
Weber’s analysis of status groups as a ‘community’ rather than a class
highlights how lifestyles are associated with and formation of prestige or
honour as an inherent part of status. Finally, Bourdieu’s approach is useful
for studying everyday life practices as forms of habitus and how these bod-
ily dispositions can produce symbolic inequalities and new understandings
of class positions such as bodily affect (Skeggs 2004) or beauty capital
(Bosman et al. 1997) that did not appear in earlier theories of class.
Bourdieu’s approach to details of class disposition is the theme of
recent studies on class identities which have highlighted the importance
of the formation of class through everyday life practices (Bettie 2000,
2003; Bottero 2004, 2005; Charlesworth 2000; McDonald et al. 2005;
Savage 2007; Savage et al. 2001, 2013; Sayer 2005) and through the
everyday lives of women in Britain (Lawler 2005; Reay 1998; Skeggs
1997a, 2004, 2005b). These studies focus primarily on individuals’ expe-
riences and analyse class ambivalences on their own terms rather than in
relation to large-scale differences between occupational groups in soci-
ety. They are mainly influenced by Bourdieu’s sociology of practice, which
identifies inequalities as the result of interplay between embodied prac-
tices and institutional processes which together generate far-reaching
inequalities of various kinds (Devine and Savage 2005, p. 13, italics in
original).
As class is constructed through webs of power relations, professions
play an important role in the degree of power and control they give to an
individual and this, in turn, affects the individual’s class location (Wright
28 M. Fathi
1997). There are two main aspects that create class belonging: firstly, the
acquisition of hegemonic practices within any context, and, secondly, the
validation of those practices within that context (Bourdieu 1984); thus,
one’s profession forms only a part of their social class. As life-chances
remain low for individuals within groups who have limited or no access
to public resources, class is an important resource through which indi-
viduals identify themselves. Economic and material aspects of class are
important to the occupational groupings involved in this book and the
need to analyse them in the processes of class formation. However, the
concern of this book is the reproduction of class inequalities through
everyday practices of migration. The objective is to explore the construc-
tion of classed identities among migrants, and therefore class is addressed
on a subjective level. The issues of identification and recognition in the
contradictory lives of migrants are important.
I started the class analysis following on from and expanding on the
works of feminist scholar Beverly Skeggs (1997a, 2004, 2005a, b, 2011).
Following Bourdieu in her class analysis and bringing a gendered approach,
Skeggs draws attention to the importance of gender analysis in the study
of inequality (Adkins 2004). She emphasises the dynamics of power strug-
gles in the formation of class and how those struggles are enacted. The
concept of recognition in Skeggs’ work plays a central role. In her studies
with working-class women (1997b, 2004), she argues that, historically,
discourses produce symbolic power that has the ability to define what is
and what is not valuable. This is a key aspect of my analysis of middle-class
migrants in which I pay attention to power within family, between couples,
at workplace, within an immigration system that assigns power positions to
women migrants. For the women in this study, classed identity is central
to how they see themselves as migrants in British society; hence, my focus
on class is based on the formation of gendered and racialised identities.
The classical Marxist, Weberian and Bourdieusian approaches to class do
not focus on gender differences or the importance of social intersections
which constitute class. In fact, the way that Bourdieu approaches women
and class is defined in terms of the women’s roles within specific spaces,
e.g. the home, which challenges the role of patriarchy but does not attend
to the formation of such space in the first place (Adkins 2004; Silva 2005).
However, some elements of these Bourdieusian class analyses limit one’s
analysis in terms of racial and ethnic differences’ effects on class experiences
that are related to migrant women’s experiences, and there is a need to
have an intersectional approach to the study of class.
2.2 Intersectionality and the Treatment of Class

Intersectionality has become not only a ‘buzzword’ but also is counted
as the most important theoretical contribution to women’s stud-
ies (McCall 2005). The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law
scholar in the US, who pointed to the complexities of social exclusion
faced by black women in the legal system in the United States of America
(1989). Her concern was that there are subjects who are placed in
between social categories whose lives are multiply negatively affected by
being both a woman and black. She wrote,
[…] because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism
and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account
cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women
are subordinated. (Crenshaw 1989, p. 140)
Although the term was coined for the first time in 1989, the idea of tak-
ing into account multiple exclusions and their interrelation and onto-
logical existence had been discussed earlier (Anthias and Yuval-Davis
1983), and the interrelation of gender and race much earlier, in 1851,
by Sojourner Truth, a black former slave woman who gave a speech at a
suffragettes’ meeting in Ohio (Brah and Phoenix 2004). For more than
a century, gender and race formed the core arguments of feminist and
anti-racist discussions, with class having less significance compared to the
other two axes of social locations, although there are key texts within
feminist and anti-racist literature that have addressed the multi-dimen-
sionality of class in relation to gender and race (Acker 2006; Davis 2011;
Phizacklea 1983, 1997; Phizacklea and Miles 1980).
Crenshaw’s argument about race and gender co-constituting multiple
systems of oppression draws attention to the importance yet neglect of
class positions in the formation of gender in feminism or race in anti-
racist movements. Both were formulated about middle-class white men
and middle-class white women in terms of how such individuals were
characterised as either powerful, independent and capable or power-
less, dependent and passive (Crenshaw 1989). How does intersectional
approach allow for experiences to unfold within structures of power,
such as the strict Islamic schooling or patriarchal family systems? Jennifer
Nash (2008) rightly questions the capability of intersectionality in
addressing subjectivity or its use for strategic deployment of identity (Nash
2008, p. 11, my emphasis). In particular, to her view, what is important
30 M. Fathi
is the extent to which intersectionality can deal with narratives of eve-

ryday life in order to highlight inequality. Hancock (2016, p. 12) also
explicates this fact that intersectionality, as a vast field now, needs to be
situated in an ‘interpretive community’ that can set the parameters of
intersectionality’s capabilities in answering global questions. So, how is
intersectionality used to understand classed experiences?
There is now a wealth of textbooks and sources published on intersec-
tionality and its uses (Collins and Bilge 2016). Cho et al. (2013, p. 785)
contend that it is time to think of intersectionality as a ‘field’ of study
rather than a methodology or a concept.
Brah and Phoenix (2004, p. 76) define intersectionality:
[…] as signifying the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects

which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation – economic, political,
cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential – intersect in historically spe-
cific contexts. The concept emphasizes that different dimensions of social
life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure strands. (Brah and
Phoenix 2004, p. 76)
Following this definition, and by acknowledging the multiplicity of intersec-

tional approach, Collins and Bilge (2016, p. 2) define intersectionality as:
[…] a way of understanding and analysing the complexity in the world, in

people and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and
political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor
[…] but by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways.
There are various accounts of how intersectionality developed into being

one of the important feminist contributions (McCall 2005). Some schol-
ars have been rightly critical of the politics within academic discussions
on intersectionality and an argument that sees intersectionality as the
‘brainchild of feminism’ (Bilge 2013) without acknowledging the role of
black scholars and women of colour in the development of the concept.
The approach taken in this book is to recognise intersectionality as
a development from the criticism to an additive approach to the ‘triple
oppression’ model (race, gender, class). Triple oppression argued that
those who experience different marginalised positions together (such
as being black, lesbian and a woman) at the same time are the most
deprived (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1983). Anthias and Yuval-Davis and

others criticised such an additive approach to the study of oppression
as it says little about how systems of oppression come into existence
in the first place (Anthias 2002, 2008; Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1983,
1992; Brah and Phoenix 2004; Yuval-Davis 1997, 2006). Anthias and
Yuval-Davis (1992) argue that the additive multiple oppression model
assumes that, firstly, ethnic minority women are always treated as the
quintessential oppressed group and, secondly, the various intersections
of deprivation can be added to each other to make a person ‘more
marginal’. The inclusion of historical perspectives on the formation
of inequalities is as important as the contemporary experiences of dis-
crimination. For example, without understanding how colonial power
relations created black as the inferior object, one cannot understand
the continuous and repeated experiences of being the Other in British
and American societies.2 As Razack (1998, p. 12) argues, ‘it is vitally
important to explore in a historical and site-specific way the meaning
of race, economic status, class, disability, sexuality and gender as they
come together to structure women in different and shifting positions of
power and privilege’.
Intersectionality has been used not only to highlight systems of
oppression but also to emphasise their formation and development
through various axes of power (McCall 2001). Systems of oppression
such as patriarchy, racism or class domination, and the wider global sys-
tems of exploitation and inferiorisation and their contribution to the
emerging differences among privileged and unprivileged migrants,
work intersectionally. The experiences of middle-class and working-
class migrants are not solely about class but also are about race, ethnic-
ity, gender and ability. In addition, the historical as well as geographical
locations of women migrants in terms of their country of origin and resi-
dence are important intersections in the formation of these classed expe-
riences that cannot be addressed by using the additive approach. Brah
and Phoenix (2004) argue that intersectionality avoids the additive prob-
lem as it focuses on how such differentiations are produced rather than
who and what is affected (see also Levine-Rasky 2011). As a useful and
important framework for the study of inequality (Anthias 2005, p. 32),
intersectionality, according to Phoenix and Pattyama (2006, p. 187),
‘foregrounds a richer and more complex ontology than approaches that
attempt to reduce people to one category at a time’.
32 M. Fathi
2.2.1 Situated Intersectionality

Razack (1998, p. 14) argues that ‘power relations deeply shape encoun-
ters’. We see what we come to see (via various processes of learning) and
how we learn to see. These positionings are formed not only through
race, gender, ability and sexuality but are also are embedded within power
relations, for example, which race has more value in a given context or
in another context where gender can be a tool for oppressing or being
oppressed, depending on who is placed on the other side of the equa-
tion. For instance, how I see myself as an Iranian woman changes when
positioned against a white man or a lesbian, middle-class, educated black
woman. Such change deeply reflects the systems of oppression, domina-
tion and subordination that are internalised historically and contem-
porarily in each one of us and the way that they are presented when we
narrate who we are or how we see the world. As Yuval-Davis (2006,
p. 195) argues, intersectionality ‘considers the conflation or separation of
different analytic levels in which [it] is located rather than just a debate on
the relationship of the divisions themselves’. In a later work, Yuval-Davis
(2015, pp. 94–95) defines ‘situated intersectionality’ as a highly sensitive
[approach] to the geographical, social and temporal locations of the par-
ticular individual or collective social actors examined’. She emphasises that
unlike in the traditional theories of stratification that comprehensive the-
ory of social inequality must include ‘global, regional, national and local’.
As such, situated intersectionality refers to how social divisions
interact but also how they are received by social actors in a particu-
lar location and time. The fact is that we need intersectional think-
ing and imagination to utilise multiplex epistemologies if we are to
treat social positions in regard with power relations and their central-
ity to any analysis of everyday life (Phoenix and Pattyama 2006). For
example, those Iranian women who marry Afghan men and those who
marry English men are, from the Iranian family law perspective, each
married to non-Iranian men and hence they do not have the right to
pass on Iranian citizenship to their children. However, in the second
group, the marriage is often deemed with an aura of victory, pride and
classed act among families and relatives although the same law applies to
them in terms of transmission of citizenship rights. Here, the position
of an Iranian woman marrying a non-Iranian man becomes a relational
subject positioning that depends on who the person on the other side
of the equation is in terms of legal, social and global race/citizenship
politics. The subject positioning of the English man and the Afghan
man in this example are formed ontologically on different bases and
cannot be reduced to the category of ‘non-Iranian’ used in legal text-
books. As such, there is no inherent oppression based on one subject
positioning, such as Afghan, English, woman, lesbian, black, disabled.
As Yuval-Davis argues, intersectionality exists at a subjective level which
operates on the ways in which people experience their lives in terms of
inclusion and exclusion, discrimination and disadvantage, specific aspira-
tions and specific identities and what they think about themselves and
others (Yuval-Davis 2006). At the same time, no social location has a
similar organising logic and those such as race, gender and class cannot
be treated similarly (Yuval-Davis 2006) as there are power relations that
give more visibility to specific social locations in a given context. I will
elaborate on this point in the following section.
2.2.2 Power Relations and Intersectionality

Power relations are an important characteristic of intersectionality and
my intention in this book is to show how social class is created through
power relations in terms of inclusion and exclusion in different groups
with regard to spaces, gender and sense of belonging. Collins and Bilge
(2016, pp. 25–30) define six important core ideas that intersectionality
addresses: ‘inequality, relationality, power, social context, complexity and
social justice’. Each one of these characteristics is embedded in the ways
in which intersectionality can be used as an analytical tool in the study of
complex social issues. All six core issues mentioned above are parts of the
analytical framework for the study of these classed narratives; however, I
am placing a particular emphasis on power relations that construct class
categories and the relationality of these categories such as ‘ba kelas’ (with
class) or ‘bi kelas’ (without class) in this context. This is especially rel-
evant because class in diasporas is difficult to define and the boundaries
of categories are more blurred when compared to a non-diasporic con-
text such as Iranian society, where other social categories, such as race,
are less visible. For example, in analysing diasporic practices in terms
of class, gender and political affiliation amongst Iranian migrants, one
must attend not only to the political, social and economic contexts of
Iran, Britain or other countries where migrants have lived part of their
lives but also to differences within members of diasporic groups includ-
ing age, gender and class (as well as other social divisions); for example
34 M. Fathi
different generations of political opposition in Iranian diaspora have

differential points of view towards the Islamic regime. Thus, diasporic
narratives of class become more nuanced in terms of intersectional anal-
ysis when elements of gender, generation, place making are taken into
account. Power becomes an important part of these narratives.
For this reason and to address this particularity of class analysis in dias-
pora, in each chapter of the book, a particular category of classed iden-
tities will be unpacked. One of the first markers of addressing power
relations in intersectionality literature was in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s
(1991) seminal essay ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity
Politics and Violence Against Women of Color’, where she analyses cat-
egorisation and the interplay of power relations in race and gender by
addressing violence against women. Three angles to intersectionality are
identified in this essay and are sufficiently noteworthy to be mentioned
here: (1) structural inefficiencies (structural intersectionality) that can-
not account for the particular experiences of women of colour who are
subjected to violent behaviour at home; (2) political intersectionality that
places women of colour at a particular disadvantage within narratives of
gender (feminism) and narratives of race (anti-racist politics) whilst their
experiences are different to white women and black men; and (3) rep-
resentational intersectionality, which refers to the reproduction of race
through representation of women of colour.
These angles are important here as they underline the workings of
power relations that marginalise certain subjects and in a similar fashion
this has been applied to the construction of class positions in this book.
The concern with migrant women’s experiences of class is not just to
take class as a natural category whilst it is constructed socially (which is
the case). More importantly, in analysing a phenomenon intersection-
ally, it is imperative to note how certain categories that are either taken
as privileged (e.g. included, powerful and remembered) or some that are
excluded (e.g. forgotten, marginal and unworthy) are formed as such
within systems of power and oppression such as capitalism, patriarchy and
imperialism. According to Fellows and Razack (1998) these power systems
have an ‘interlocking’ effect, meaning that their systems of operation work
together rather than alone. Such an approach and emphasis on power
relations takes us away from the binary divisions between the good and
bad, the oppressed and the oppressor, and lead us to discuss the relative
privileged positions within categories and the power of exclusion that is at
work in creating a certain class position that is not always a marginal or a
privileged one, but is a position that is in fluctuation from various positions
in the class system (see Collins 1990). Dhamoon (2011) has taken the idea
of ‘matrix of domination’ introduced by Collins (1990) to introduce the
‘matrix of meaning-making’. Dhamoon (2011, p. 238) argues that:
The focus of analysis [matrix of meaning-making] is thus not “just” domi-

nation but the very interactive processes and structures in which meanings
of privilege and penalty are produced, reproduced, and resisted in contin-
gent and relational ways.
It is drawing from such view that I am concentrating on the importance of

privileged positioning within a marginal category (i.e. migrant); an amal-
gamation of various positions and the meaning-making of these positions
are what Anthias refers to as ‘positioning’ (2008). The point about power
relations is to move away from binary understanding of power that places
people, for example, as either the perpetrator or the victim. There are
‘differing degrees and forms of privilege’ and ‘we are always and already
implicated in the conditions that structure a matrix’ (Dhamoon 2011,
p. 239). In fact, applying intersectionality to the privileged positioning
has only recently been taken up as a criticism against the way in which
intersectionality has been used as a tool for reform at the margins by lay-
practitioners and scholars (Hancock 2016). Such a practice of using inter-
sectionality to focus superficially, to address marginal positions, is criticised
as having inhibited the application of intersectionality as a framework that
has ‘the potential to radically reform our structures of government and
public policies as well as to make other changes’ (Hancock 2016, p. 13).
The next section draws on the privileged position and how the intersec-
tional framework has been applied to address power relations.
2.2.3 Privileged Position and Intersectionality

What does a ‘privileged migrant’ mean? To understand this subject posi-
tioning, it is important to note that there are tangible capitals that construct
migrant individuals’ class positions such as migrants’ professions, the need
for a labour market for professions, familial assets (for example inheritance)
opportunities for enhancement of qualifications that will subsequently bring
better employment prospects, the opportunity to migrate, familial links,
etc. These capitals place this group of migrants within power relations that
exclude a large group of migrants who have more marginal situations, such
as refugees and asylum seekers, unskilled labour migrants, students and
dependents of migrants who do not have the chance to compete with those
36 M. Fathi
who are highly skilled (this is not to essentialise their position of power com-
pared to ‘white middle-class British’ people). Highly skilled migrants’ con-
tradictory positioning was a concept first introduced in class terms by E.
O. Wright (1997), mainly with regard to class positions in the USA. Wright’s
argument is that within the class structure there are certain positions which
are doubly contradictory in their degree of control. The control comprises
three different forms: control of the means of production, control over how
things should be produced and control over labour power—in other words,
he argued that some are in the grey areas and are located in between class
schemata, those who enjoy prestige but not the salary or those whose sala-
ries are in higher tiers but do not fit within the occupational groups defined
for those salaries. Floya Anthias (2008, 2005) uses the term differently and
more appropriately to the purpose of this book. Her intersectional approach
refers to Wright’s overlooking of racial and ethnic differences in class analysis
and calls for attention as to how different social locations are important in
class differences and vice versa (Anthias 2005). Anthias’s counter argument
to Wright is similar to Zillah Eisenstein’s (2014) critique of Thomas Piketty’s
well-known recent work on class analysis Capital (2014) which highlights
Piketty’s lack of attention to intersectionality and to the importance of race
and gender in theorising class and inequality worldwide. The term ‘contra-
dictory locations’ is beneficial when it is used intersectionally and by taking
into account the multiple and shifting inequalities and marginalities that
highly skilled migrants face. In order to address relationality of class and the
contradictory positions of women doctor migrants, I am applying Anthias’s
concept of ‘translocational positionality’ in conjunction to identity (Anthias
2008) as the former’s emphasis on processes is important in identification
processes that help to delve into the processes of othering rather than to the
individual. As Dhamoon (2011, p. 235) argues, ‘focus on processes and sys-
tems shifts the gaze from the Othered identity and category of Otherness to
a critique of the social production and organization of relations of Othering
and normalization’.
2.3 Identity and Translocational Positionality

According to Yuval-Davis (2010), identity is a contested subject. When
discussing classed identities in this book, it is important to define what
is meant by the use of the term. Much has been written on the defini-
tion of identity in different disciplines, and reviewing all the literature
is beyond the scope of this book.3 Like some theorists (Brubaker and
Cooper 2000) who argued that the notion of identity is becoming less
useful because it tells both too much and too little about a person,
Anthias (2008, p. 6) believes that people have ‘multiple locations, posi-
tions and belongings in a situated and contextual way which does not
end up as a thoroughgoing reification or deconstruction of difference’.
Her use of the term translocational (instead of ‘transnational’ and ‘dis-
locational’) is an alternative approach to understanding processes, ideas
and experiences relating to the self and others, and it addresses the short-
comings derived from identity, mainly its treatment in the literature as a
fixed concept which does not illustrate the processes and formations of
social locations (Anthias 2002, pp. 494–495).
‘Positionality’ comprises a set of relations and practices that impli-
cate identification, performativity or action (Anthias 2002, p. 501).
Positionality combines social position and social positioning. The for-
mer (position) refers to an outcome or a set of affectivities (social struc-
ture), while the latter (positioning) means a set of practices, actions and
meanings (agency). Anthias (2000) considers that there are three locales
in which migrants are placed: the homeland from where they have
migrated, the society of migration and the migrant group. She argues
that the notion of ‘positionality’ refers to these three shifting locations
of migrants. Positionality is formed through the interplay of the intersec-
tions such as race, gender, class and ethnicity in these three locales. For
example, an Iranian woman is not fixed to a particular identity, as there
is no fixed identity such as being a woman or being an Iranian that could
define one in this sense. Her positionality in terms of sense of belong-
ing should be seen in the social locale in which she finds herself in her
daily experiences, for example when she is working in a hospital or when
she finds herself at home with her family. The other locale, according to
Anthias, is the country of origin. Positionality should be understood in
relation to processes: for example, to a great extent the experience of
being Iranian is embedded in the experiences of growing up in Iran or
in an Iranian family in the diaspora. Positionality is not fixed or static
and is constantly changing because it is being told and retold in differ-
ent places and times and for different audiences: for example, the ways in
which Iranian women activists inside Iran define the notion of an Iranian
woman are different to those of Iranian women outside Iran, because the
audiences, the social setting and the migration processes all affect such
narratives. ‘Who we are’ is produced at the time the stories are narrated
and in relation to the multiple audiences for whom they are narrated.
38 M. Fathi
Skey (2011) argues that narratives about who we are have consequences.
Stories are told within the intersectional lived life and are told from situ-
ated and local positionings.
‘Translocational positionality’ as a concept that recognises the issues
of exclusion and political mobilisation on the basis of collective identity
and narrations of belonging and otherness. It also highlights the role
of audiences and the effects they have on the formation of the identity
narratives. Anthias believes that by looking at the narratives of loca-
tion (such as race, gender or class) in different locales (geographical and
diasporic locations), the concern with identity being a fixed possession of
individuals rather than a process will be eliminated (Anthias 2001, 2002,
2005, 2008, 2010). Anthias (2005) argues that unless we take an inter-
sectional approach to the study of social class, the underlying inequalities
that tend to be hidden in the form of hierarchical stratification will not
be revealed. As fluid as it is, class is inseparable from other social loca-
tions in the social world (Anthias 2005). When we consider the notion
of social class, we are talking about social spaces in which individuals deal
with power relations (Bourdieu 1984). These power relations confer rel-
ative positions and positionings to agents within the social field. Power
relations exist everywhere (Foucault 1990) and affect all social stratifica-
tions in a constituting way; therefore, class cannot inherently exist with-
out race, ethnicity, gender and vice versa. My intention in this book is to
show explicitly how class, as the main focus of the book, is fluid in differ-
ent locations but also concretely experienced by women through various
identity narratives.
The societal practices to which people are subjected obscure the active
decision-making of lived experiences within ethnic categories. Our mem-
bership in different ethnic groups does not necessarily entail the prac-
tices of the markers attributed to that ethnic category; for example, one
may call herself Iranian but not practise what others deem to be ‘Iranian’
by any member or non-member of the Iranian community, which illu-
minates how powerfully people (or ones in the position of enunciation)
define ‘Iranian-ness’. Applying the concept of positionality is therefore
useful as it draws on these power relations of recognition and misrecog-
nition or inclusion and exclusion, which were described above. The eth-
nic category of ‘Iranian’ or ‘Muslim’ does not contain specific practices
that can be identified with labels of Iranian or Muslim. Categories are
constructed and change over time and in different contexts and are not
understood in the same way, even by those who define themselves within
those terms. This was evident in my attempts to interview one of the

participants for this book who was described by other doctors as non-
Iranian. The gatekeeper who introduced her to me warned me about
‘her lack of Iranian attributes’ and as a result her incompetency (in his
view) in participating in this research, which was about ‘Iranian women
migrants’. She did not tick the box for my gatekeeper. However, when I
interviewed her a few days later in her office, she described herself, quite
proudly, as an Iranian woman migrant. Within these different contexts
and historical moments, subjects make decisions about their practices,
about identity narratives and about the categorisations in which they
choose to place themselves.4
For the purpose of analysing the classed narratives intersectionally,
one should also take into account that the way in which we perceive
the world or a particular phenomenon, understand or imagine a con-
cept is also situated (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis 2002).5 When I arrived
in the UK to study gender studies, I was quite aware of the fact that my
education, my having grown up in a Muslim country and my experi-
ences of being a young woman from a lower middle-class family in Iran
affected me in such a way that I had many differences with my Iranian
classmate, who had grown up in an Iranian family in Germany. At one
point we had a conversation about sexuality and race, during which I
realised how prejudiced I was about certain groups of people such as
black people or our lesbian classmate. My situated narratives were dif-
ferent to hers because of the processes of the formation of our different
Iranian identities: an example of translocational positionality. Situated
narratives are about attachments and identifications as well as normative
assessments: we judge people based on these situated understandings.
For me, with limited exposure and knowledge about a black person
in Tehran, understanding racism outside an Iranian–Afghan relation-
ship was becoming clear when I started working and studying in the
UK and became a target of racist remarks at work myself. Of course,
class, gender, race and ethnicity are not experienced in the same way
everywhere and by everyone; for example, Batool, who is the partici-
pants I described above, feels positively about being an Iranian woman
living in Britain, for instance constantly referring to positive attributes
such as being hospitable and caring, while Solmaz feels differently, for
instance criticising the negative behaviour of Iranians living outside Iran
(e.g. their perceived unpunctuality). These differences at the very least
reflect the historical periods in which migrants entered a host country,
40 M. Fathi
their degree of integration into British society, their professional status

and grade at work (being a junior doctor or a senior, being a GP or a
surgeon) and their sense of identification within their surroundings (for
example, to what extent they shop in Iranian/Turkish supermarkets or
go to mainstream Western foodstores). From this, one can understand
that the sense of belonging and unbelonging to certain groupings or
social locations is not only local and situated but is also intersectional:
it is a well-documented fact that Iranian women experience migration
more positively (Dallalfar 1994; Dossa 2004) than migrant men, who
are subjected to a different form of racism (usually being seen as vio-
lent subjects too). However, according to Darvishpour (2002) Iranian
women in Sweden invest more deeply than men in ways to integrate
into Swedish society. It also became clear in the work for this book
that this group of Iranian women migrants are either more, or at least
as much, integrated as their husbands are (see Chap. 4 for more dis-
cussion of this). As such, focusing on the contexts within which these
positionalities are formed helps us to understand the contradictory posi-
tions in the lives of these women. They are privileged migrants who are
accepted as ‘part’ of the British society in relation to the social class,
professional category and the socio-economic status they have, but at
the same time they are seen as not belonging on the basis of their eth-
nicity, particularly in the current atmosphere after nationalistic narra-
tives that regained momentum following the 2016 referendum the UK
held to leave the European Union.
Categories are not pre-given. Cultural, economic and political changes
bring social change and dislocation of categories as they are all parts of
the contexts in which migrants live. Due to the transnational movement
of people, easy access to the internet and exposure to events, lifestyle and
information in different parts of the world, there is no longer a limit to
one’s local (immediate) knowledge. Brah’s concept of diaspora space
(1996) was and is still a useful term to refer to these boundaryless loca-
tions that migrants occupy, as it looks at differences between individuals
not in terms of the migrant and the indigene or the majority and the
minority but in terms of the power relations around who can be included
and who cannot and at particular times and in particular spaces; and of
course in this interplay of power relations, there are different elements
at work. These discursive analyses of how the categories of migrant
and indigene are constructed impact on how belonging and class are
experienced.
2.3.1 Translocational Class

Anthias (2005) argues that unless we take an intersectional approach
to the study of social class, the underlying inequalities that tend to be
hidden in the form of hierarchical stratification will not be revealed. As
fluid as it is, class is inseparable from other social locations in the social
world. When we consider the notion of social class, we are talking about
social spaces in which individuals deal with power relations (Bourdieu
1984). These power relations confer relative positions and position-
ings to agents within the social field. Power relations exist everywhere
(Foucault 1990) and affect all social stratifications in a constituting way;
therefore, class cannot inherently exist without race, ethnicity, gender
and vice versa. In migrants’ experiences, it is translocational, local and
situated. In both forms of trans-movement—whether across intersec-
tions of the social field or geographical borders—the self is affected by
the local knowledges that one acquires about the self and the other.
People with different situated positionings and imaginations coexist
within the same locality. Our local knowledge is limited to the social
networks to which we have access. Thus, knowledge can become local
for a person upon their awareness of the existence of the discourses
around it. The ‘knowing’ of the person is the boundary between what
is local and non-local to her/him. The idea of locality, then, emphasises
a person’s agency and autonomy as well as the different forms of capi-
tal to which she has access. The subject herself defines what she knows,
what she imagines and how she narrates and performs her knowledges
in a specific context; thus, the very same acts may have different mean-
ings in another context.
Since we have situated positionings in a symbolic locality, the social
experiences of all agents within the same locality are likely to be differ-
ent. As Bourdieu (1984) argues, knowledge is a matter of positioning. It
is important where and how one is located in the classification schemata
because that positioning characterises the way one sees oneself and oth-
ers situated. In discussions about class, then, one should remember that
the performances of one person in one locality (geographical and sym-
bolic) are formed within constantly changing limits and boundaries. As
Donna Haraway (1988) argues, our partial perception is the result of our
social positioning. This is why discussions around class in one context do
not seem appropriate and meaningful in another context, although the
42 M. Fathi
two may have certain characteristics in common. The situatedness and

locality of class reminds us that these contradictory positionings are con-
structed in and through power relations in society.
2.4 Conclusion
Throughout this chapter, I have shown that class is formed in and
through power relations, which form a set of imaginations, perceptions,
performances and validations in discourses (knowledges) available to an
individual. Following Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992), Skeggs (2004,
2011) and Spivak (1988), recognition was argued to be a key element
in the construction of identities. The relationship between power and
recognition, however, is not always straightforward and it changes in dif-
ferent settings, depending on the speaker and the audience particularly
when addressing the lives of migrants whose social identities are translo-
cated (Anthias 2011). Understanding class in the lives of migrant women
requires a rooted consciousness about how one is situated in the matrix
of transnational and intersectional positionings that place women differ-
ently to men, working classes differently to middle classes, homosexuals
differently to heterosexuals and migrants differently to non-migrants. I
presented a rather long narrative to conclude that why an intersectional
and translocational framework is necessary in examining that everyday
practices of social locations of migrant positions. Translocational position-
ality needs to be seriously considered in any research on social identities
with migrant groups as it allows for the situated intersectional positions
of privileged, as well as those in marginal positions by analysing the ‘pro-
cesses’ that have led to their position of privilege or marginalisation.
This is to suggest that people’s lives in privileged locations hegemonies
are as intersected as those who are in marginal positions (Hancock 2016;
Levine-Rasky 2011; Yuval-Davis 2010). In other words, when address-
ing class in a diaspora, the study of social inequalities and situated imag-
inings of a concept, other social intersections, transnational practices
and global positionings of migrants need to be engaged at all levels of
analysis. The treatment of power relations, in micro and macro forms,
individual and institutional is placed at the heart of my analysis of class
in diaspora. This book attempts to show how the position of a woman
migrant doctor changes as she speaks to a fellow Iranian researcher, about
other migrants, about home, gender, and for an imagined audience.
Notes
1. The notion of class mobility and social change are two concepts which
should be examined within contexts of society, institutions and interper-
sonal relationships. The social sphere creates the opportunities to access
the means of relationships. Individuals form a ‘structuring mechanism’
within themselves to operate inside these relationships (Bourdieu and
Wacquant 1992, p. 16).
2. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (2015) White people may deny it, but racism is
back in Britain: Discrimination, prejudice, violence and common bigotry
raise no concern these days, The Independent, 12 July 2015, accessed 5
October 2016.
3. See the collection of seminal essays about identity in Paul du Gay, Jessica
Evans and Peter Redman (eds.) (2000) Identity: A Reader, London: Sage.
4. See Yuval-Davis (2010), who argues that identities, as narratives, are a sub-
category of belonging.
5. See Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis (2002) for their differentiation between sit-
uated knowledge and imagination.
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CHAPTER 3
Classed and Gendered Growing up
After mapping out my analysis of classed identities in Chap. 2, in this

chapter, I start with the class location of doctors (including physicians,
dentists and academic Ph.D. holders) in Iran by drawing on the familial
influence on women’s pathways to studying medicine in order to become
‘khanoom doktor’ (a lady doctor). Although Iran has a free education
system, the processes that facilitate women to enter medical professions
remain mainly middle class. Families and, in particular, mothers in these
families, apply a strict system of surveillance, normalisation and moralisa-
tion to instil classed values in the next generation. This chapter discusses
how educational pathways are continued through migratory pathways
and how migration to English-speaking countries is seen as the com-
pletion of a journey of generational class construction. Migratory path-
ways are gendered processes because all these women are the main and/
or independent applicants in the processes of migration. Classed identi-
ties for women doctors are created through educational aspirations and
choices, which are dominated by power relations within families in Iran.
It is through the formation of such aspirations that the women in this
research tell narratives that allow them to present themselves as respect-
able and classed subjects.
In the first section on surveillance, concepts of disciplining and gov-
erning in relation to earlier periods of these women’s lives will be dis-
cussed. Foucault’s concept of governmentality is instrumental in
understanding this processes of instilling the aspirations of higher
education and becoming a doctor. This governing process includes

50 M. Fathi
governmental programmes for both individuals and families, each having

a different agenda for higher education and the creation of selves. The
Iranian state systematically restricts women to confined and gender-seg-
regated spaces, whereas they try to maintain an autonomous life. As we
shall see in this chapter, family plays an important role in creating these
women’s educational aspirations, a process that is normalised. The final
section of this chapter concerns respectability as an omnipresent ‘signifier
of class’ (Skeggs 1997, p. 1). This section revolves around the construc-
tion of respectability inherent in the medical profession and how it is
used as a goal and a tool for the formation and reinforcement of a certain
classed identity.
3.1 Educational Surveillance
Foucault (1984) argues that surveillance has a great impact on the
making of a subject. The concept of surveillance used here is under-
stood within a pedagogical and classed framework. Surveillance refers
to observation with the aim of correcting, disciplining and governing.
Educational surveillance is not an Iranian phenomenon and has been
studied in many contexts such as in Britain (Archer 2010; Barone 2006;
Franceschelli and O’Brien 2014; Reay 1998a, b, 2005; Reay et al. 2001;
Walkerdine et al. 2001), Japan (Yamamoto 2016), the USA (Lareau
2002) and Peru (Ames 2012). Women in Iran are subjected to surveil-
lance by the state, religion and culture, more so than men (Moallem
2005; Shahidian 2002). Although they appear unproblematic, these
women’s ambitions and aspirations for future jobs are controlled, gov-
erned and evaluated by families, schools and the state. In ‘The Means of
Correct Training’, Foucault argues that:
Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that

regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise.
(Foucault 1984, p. 188)
Foucault argues that the success of disciplinary power derives from the
use of instruments: ‘hierarchical observation, normalising judgement,
and their combination in a procedure that is specific to it—the examina-
tion’ (Foucault 1984, p. 188). The surveilling systems do not ‘surveil’
in a practical sense, but in the sense that they instil in an individual the
ambition of becoming a certain subject by thinking in the ‘right’ way.
3 CLASSED AND GENDERED GROWING UP 51
In almost all the interviews I collected throughout the years with differ-
ent cohorts of Iranian migrants, there was evidence that the surveillance
process is frequently employed within families to shape children’s lives. It
starts by creating ‘a desire to become’ a certain subject by thinking in a
‘right’ or ‘correct’ way. As Foucault argues, for training to be successful
it has to be directed in a specific way. One main aspect of class formation
lies in ‘generative surveillance’ of cultural capital. As Johnson (1993) says
of Bourdieu’s theory, cultural capital refers to a form of knowledge that:
is accumulated through a long process of acquisition or inculcation, which

includes the pedagogical action of the family or group members (family
education), educated members of the social formation (diffuse education)
and social institutions (institutionalised education). (Johnson 1993, p. 7)
Children inherit cultural capital through familial and institutional educa-

tion, but this form of knowledge needs to be organised and disciplined
and ready to be evaluated within the standards of that given context. As
cultural capital is context-based, its organisation and correction can draw
boundaries between different classes. Certain ambitions in these life sto-
ries represent a form of ‘correct’ knowledge that is passed on to the next
generation from parents, therefore ambitions by themselves are a form
of capital that parents knowingly supervise and guard. In this way, the
ambition to study medicine (not just any higher education degree) is cul-
tivated and developed in generations of Iranian children in the hope of
creating a future classed life.
3.1.1 Creating Ambition: Passing on Class to the Girls

A main aspect of class lies in generative surveillance. I argue that in the
lives of these women, all of them (except Monir) speak about class in
terms of their family bonds and the cultural capital they ‘inherited’ from
their parents. However, I am not arguing here about the creation of
classed future in terms of any form of study of higher education. After
the revolution, medicine became a ‘permitted’ or ‘allowed’ subject area
for women and its study became synonymous with high social class, rep-
resenting an ultimate goal in the lives of many young people.1 Medicine
as an ultimate goal was particularly represented as a class ‘target’ for
women who came from working-class backgrounds. As Monir says:
52 M. Fathi
Monir: You know, when you are a child you think that the highest thing
you can achieve is to become a doctor. And remember that in our lives,
everything was very restricted in Iran. I mean everything was very limited.
Studying medicine was not as feasible for the participants’ mothers as it

was for the participants themselves. In general, those mothers who were
educated might become teachers but not doctors2; hence, the social
positioning of doctors became exotic for the parents of these women
because, firstly, the mothers could not become doctors in the way their
children could and, secondly, by becoming doctors, the children could
secure a privileged life in Iranian society. For girls, becoming doctors
shielded them from gendered discrimination. However, generational
class and the creation of an ambitious self were not entirely optional
choices. I argue later how the ambitious self is used as a strategic tool for
securing a classed life for the next generation by parents who were them-
selves governed by systems of power in Iranian society.
3.1.2 Mothers and Class Surveillance

Mothers, it has been argued, have a central role in transmitting cultural
capital (Lawler 2000; May 2008; Reay 1998a; Silva 2005). As Lawler
(2000) argues, what constructs a ‘good’ mother and a ‘bad’ mother is
intertwined with class identities. Outlining the ‘right’ pathway is thus
seen as the proper or correct way of bringing up children. Roxana,
whose parents have university degrees in social science and law, discusses
in detail how her mother used to cultivate an ambitious self for her and
her sisters to become doctors. In the following quotation, Roxana draws
attention to the role her mother played in ‘disciplining’ her early life:
Roxana: My mother was the most important person in looking after our
academic life. In Iranian families, you know, mothers have the most impor-
tant role. And my mother, err, because she was a teacher herself, education
was very important to her. Erm… we were really scared of her. I was scared
of my mother regarding studying and I was embarrassed in front of my
father when I had a bad result. I mean, whenever I got a bad result I was
afraid that my mother would tell me off, and I would rather die than show
the bad mark to my father [and have him think] that I was the sort of bad
child who got a bad mark. It was something that I internalised.
The mother’s surveillance and her poignant role in Roxana’s life as a

guardian and as the one who was hierarchically observing Roxana’s well-
being made her internalise an inner self (habitus). This will be discussed
in the second part of this chapter in terms of normalisation, which refers
to Foucault’s second instrument of discipline.
Governance and control of educational achievements were perpetu-
ated (and sometimes forced) by the families of these women and were
the tools that made the mothers ‘good’, the same mothers whose daugh-
ters would later go on to become doctors. Families viewed the process
of their daughters becoming doctors not only as a financial guarantee of
their future life but also as the creation of a classed life. Creating ambi-
tions of this type (as forms of cultural capital) places children in a dif-
ferent class and enables social mobility, whilst also creating and giving a
sense of identity to mothers in relation to morality.
Roxana’s mother’s governing role, described in the above extract,
shows a genealogical account of how ambitions in a young woman are
cultivated, guarded and formed. Roxana refers to detailed characteristics
of her childhood experiences where there were various but systematic
attempts to create a knowledge-based atmosphere. The quotation is for-
mulated by Roxana to suit her current positioning as a doctor and to jus-
tify her approach in bringing up her own children. She continues to say:
Roxana: […] education is my top priority. And the fact that I am still
doing my training in medicine proves it. I mean, I think it is the most
important thing. Even in my family, [I say to] my children… that ‘your
education is the most important thing. Nothing is more important than
your education.’
In this quotation, Roxana shows how, as a middle-class mother, she

now recognises the right things, knows the right things, wants the right
things and values the right things (Lawler 2000). In common with most
of the women in this study, Roxana lives a life formed from such ambi-
tious thinking about her and her children becoming doctors. There is an
indication of a plan in Roxana’s life as well as in the lives of others who
describe their childhood as determined and different to other children’s.
By drawing in the next generation, she is in fact reiterating the impor-
tance of habitus in raising children in the ‘right’ way by indicating that
she should have the same ‘disciplining’ role her mother used to have,
although in a modern way. For example, Khorshid believes that her son
54 M. Fathi
is not forced to be an academic but that he himself ‘wants’ to be a doctor

in the future:
Khorshid: […] my kids like my job. Although there have been lots of chal-
lenges in my life, Ali [her son] has experienced the challenges himself.
Now he has decided to become a doctor. Not because ‘I’ have told him to,
because I never talk to him about what job he must have. But Ali thinks
the best satisfaction one could get in this world is to make other people
happy or save them or help them. I am sure it is true.
As I argued previously, these women state how they understood from an

early age that they wanted to become doctors. For example, Khorshid
argues about the same ‘plan’ for her own life right at the very beginning
of her childhood:
Mastoureh: What do you think was the reason you became a doctor?
Khorshid: I do not know what the reason was… erm, I remember when
I was going to school, I was very young, I was in my first or second year
in primary school and my dad had one of those [old] film cameras and he
asked: ‘Khorshid, what do you want to be in the future?’ ‘A doctor.’ ‘What
sort of doctor?’ ‘A gynaecologist.’ [Silence]. This film is evidence. I was
probably not even six years old.
Mastoureh: [Silence] Hmm, you mean you felt as a child that you would
become a doctor?
Khorshid: Yes, I have always wanted that.
The ambitions in this context are not only about the importance of
learning. They are also part of an evaluation process in which these
women understand the symbolic values attached to these childhood
activities and in which their narration of them reinforces their classed
identity in the interview setting. Becoming a doctor is an idea that is
planted and is expected to affect the child’s understanding of class at an
early stage. Monir, for example, complained to me that her daughter was
choosing humanities instead of something more ‘practical’, and Roya
told me a story in which she played the role of an advisor in guiding a
friend to study medical sciences rather than continuing a career in the
social sciences.
In the examples above, there is an underlying indication of the type

of choice and decision that these women had to make as young children.
Roxana, Khorshid and Monir are following trajectories that started off
with a ‘planned life’. Here, taking the right route means having a plan
to become a doctor. The understanding of a ‘plan’ in itself is represented
not only as entering into higher education but also as ‘accessing’ a social
world and certain subjects like medicine and dentistry, which need a
degree of observation by parents. Foucault (1984) maintains that disci-
pline gains its power through observation.
In the cases above, and in almost all of these women’s lives, there is
a form of governance that attempts to force a certain form of identity
on to individuals different from ‘other’ groupings of people. Walkerdine
and Lucey (1989) argue that the working classes are constantly pro-
duced and reproduced as different and as the ‘Other’ in such a way that
their difference depends on them accepting their oppression, exploita-
tion and inequality. In addition, Evans (2009) draws attention to the
process of distinction among working-class girls in Britain and how
institutional regulations of education are indicative of having certain
cultural values or getting things ‘right’. Firstly, medicine for the partici-
pants is seen, accepted and valued as a classed act, not just as a subject
area in which one can attain a profession. Although education(in Iran
and Britain) and, in particular, medicine is represented as being equally
available to everyone, the likelihood of succeeding without the ‘correct’
classed backgrounds is low. Secondly, medicine and dentistry are repre-
sented as a destiny not available to everyone. Finally, this is used as a
point of differentiation and distinction between those who can carry the
title of a doctor (including Ph.D. graduates and pharmacists in Iran) and
non-doctors.
These three points are generally absent from the women’s narratives.
These women’s agendas in becoming women doctors were different
from the state’s agenda in promoting women’s education in Iran. Their
aims and desires to become doctors are seen more as an apolitical, class-
based plan which seemed right to their families, while the state’s agenda
is more focused on the creation of a fundamentally religious society with
the sexes segregated in the public sphere.
Most Iranian families promote a picture of educated women who can
support themselves independently. This characterisation was significant in
the lives of those parents who saw the time of the revolution as being an
unstable period. Not all the women referred to the issue of independence
56 M. Fathi
and financial security, however; Niloufar was the only woman who men-
tioned this to me when she was driving me to her home from the train
station:
Niloufar: Have you seen a hungry doctor? A doctor is never hungry and
can always earn a living. Because there is always war, famine and even revo-
lution. People always need doctors.
Women’s unfulfilled wishes to be independent subjects in Iran have been

a major driving force in their longing to become doctors. This is because
this pathway is seen as being at the top of the professional hierarchy due
to its independence from economic downturns and political agendas.
In Iran, medicine is associated with a certain kind of class, with respect
and a good salary. Class and respect were the aspects of this profession of
greatest concern to these women.
Upon close examination of these stories, it becomes evident that the
possibilities and opportunities for women to become educated after the
revolution are set within a class system. Although a system of equality is
promoted through the national discourse, their stories are highly indica-
tive of inequality and they attempt to push away the gendered discrimi-
natory boundaries placed against them. These women’s stories are filled
with markers of class that clearly place them as living privileged lives. In
other words, although official pedagogy in Iran seems egalitarian, and
success is advertised as viable for everyone, in fact only a certain group of
people are able to follow these pathways.
Medicine is represented within the context of forming a family plan
rather than as a ‘choice’. Even for Monir, who came from a working-class
background, and Nina, who had another job before becoming a doctor,
medicine was a ‘destined’ fact. It was not ‘a’ form of higher educational
achievement. It was represented as part of the pathway of becoming
who they are, a concept that will be explored further in the next part
of the chapter on normalisation. Tamboukou (1999, p. 213) argues
that ‘situating the problem in a system of relations that can account for
the socially shared discomfort is a turning point in genealogy’. Using
Tamboukou’s Foucauldian methodology, medicine is represented as in
the summary below:
1. It seemed to be an unachievable goal for others, but not for these
women.
2. It was a job that other people wished for.

3. It would create more opportunities for marriage.
4. It would mobilise the whole family and encourage other siblings
and relatives to follow a similar path.
5. It would make the parents proud of their children and would give
the parents themselves a sense of achievement.
What is interesting, however, is that these women did not show any
awareness of being directed into becoming the subjects they have
become; hence, this sort of planning and surveilling of their lives seemed
to be normal, worthy and valuable within the exchange value system.
3.1.3 Lack of Choice or Destined Pathways?

Some of these women told narratives about the lack of choices in their
lives. They understood, however, that this ‘lack’ was not in terms of the
limited resources available to them but instead in terms of the represen-
tation of medicine and dentistry as an ultimate goal in a person’s life, a
lack of which would jeopardise a ‘healthy’ way of thinking. Giti, a dentist
who studied in Iran, complained how the lives of students are framed by
a set of cultural attributions for these subjects. She was dissatisfied that
her agency was underestimated and that she had to follow others’ expec-
tations in society and accept the destiny of ‘clever’ people.
Giti: […] Socially, I can say that the stress in Iran was very high, study-
ing, the expectation that others had of you or the stress that was there,
it was like you were born to do that thing. It was a path that you had to
pass along. When I went to high school, I was a very clever person and I
was very good in maths and computing. But nobody [family] let me study
those subjects. They said: ‘No, you have to become a doctor.’ And I did it.
But I think that there is huge social pressure on people who are success-
ful. You have to follow the path that others want for you. You have to go
through it.
Giti argued that clever people are regulated and channelled into the
pathway of becoming a doctor. Although it seems that the participants
have a lot of choices in life, they are in fact following similar and pre-
determined pathways. Some of them also mentioned that medicine in
Western countries is similarly seen as a top subject, one that everyone
58 M. Fathi
wishes to study; however, in the case of these women, something that

was repeated again and again was the issue of ‘culture’ and the deep-
rootedness of the idea of becoming a doctor within an ‘Eastern culture’,
the ways in which Iranian and non-Iranian are formed.3
We see how Giti’s ambitions are corrected and governed into those
of a successful person. She was not allowed to move along a pathway
of her choice, and that is why she complains about a lack of choice.
This issue of governing and control was perpetuated by the families of
these women and, in some cases, the idea of studying medicine was not
only encouraged but was even forced on them. For families, to see their
daughters becoming educated and becoming doctors was to see a guar-
antee of their future life. Medicine was perceived as a profession that
would protect them and give them a voice. This approach to medicine
was sustained, especially after the revolution, when the rights of women
were drastically reduced in society (Shahidian 2002); however, these
forms of political narrative were absent from their reasoning. Instead,
they made references to class-related issues. For example, Maryam
responded to my question as follows:
Mastoureh: Why did you say that everybody at home said ‘Maryam should
become a doctor’? Why do you think they said that?
Maryam: My mother said it when I was very small. She went to see a
doctor and there it was, a lady doctor at that time who had blonde hair
and eyes similar to mine [blue eyes] and my mother said, ‘Oh yes, when
Maryam grows up, she should become a doctor like her’. She became
a role model for my mother. But I did not turn out like her because I
became a doctor in Iran and I had to wear the hijab and wear a manteau,
the scarf [Islamic dress] and all that. And I used to tell her, ‘Mum, I did
not become the doctor you imagined’. But she said, ‘No, it is enough that
you became a doctor, even with these clothes’.
The imagery Maryam’s mother used in order to encourage Maryam to

become a doctor is full of attributions to a Western classed life. Medicine
here is not only seen as an ambition but it also represents a goal, a cul-
ture and a form of capital, although it is put into an imagined form to
make it more tangible for a child. Maryam attaining the title of doctor
was enough for her mother; it served to maintain cultural capital, i.e. the
ambition was transmitted to Maryam as a child.
Medicine is constructed as a classed subject of study through both

family education and society. Here, in Maryam’s story, we can see how
the pictures, imaginations and ambitions are created in the forms of capi-
tal and how people are envisaged as having a sense of belonging or not
belonging to those situations. In later parts of this book, we shall see
that classed acts become meaningful in performances for specific people
(audience) at different times and in different places, and that they lose
their meaning when they are outside that context or region, as Goffman
argues (1982). In other words, class is constructed out of a set of mean-
ings that a person or a group of people believe to be true in a certain
context (Goffman 1982). When people migrate, their positioning (their
feelings towards their social location) are not only dislocated but also
transformed into a new form that is used to train the younger genera-
tions (see Anthias 2008).
3.1.4 Governing the Ambition

This system of control and regulation is not limited to the state, the gov-
erning bodies in Iranian society and families; rather, it extends to other
institutions, such as schools. Surveillance is formed symbolically and
is used as a sub-culture for making class distinctions. In the following
example, Setareh, the youngest interviewee, discusses how her interests
were channelled into the career that was expected of her:
Mastoureh: Why did you study medicine?
Setareh: […] maybe because from my childhood there was an expecta-

tion that I must study medicine and things like that. Or maybe the fear
that by studying a subject other than medicine, other people would say it
is because she could not study medicine, or something like that. I think
that was the real reason. And, also, my parents liked medicine more. And
because of that I went to study medicine. But I remember that I became
the third student in computer science for Azad [Open] University. I really
wanted to do computer science but I just did medicine for these reasons.
Setareh gave up physics and computer science to pursue medicine. The

invisible web of social observation in Setareh’s story is indicative of
how governance works on a hierarchical as well as a rhizomatic level.
This complicated network of power relations that shapes Setareh’s deci-
sion-making is similar to that in the other women’s narratives. There is
60 M. Fathi
a cursory explanation about what limited her in terms of a pathway of

‘talent’ and ‘intelligence’, but the way in which she refers to the power
of people’s words demonstrates the spreading of the roots of discourse
about class distinction among Iranian people and the ways in which such
discourse limits and restricts people’s movements along different routes.
3.2 Normalisation of Pathways
Families recognise, create and control the ‘right’ ambitions through
their value systems. It is predominantly mothers who direct their chil-
dren along the right pathway. Therefore, the distinction between good
mothers and bad mothers is between those who know and those who
do not know the right decisions. The decision to study medicine is seen
as an ‘ambition’ but not a form of envy or desire. Narratives of envy,
as discussed in Steedman (1986), Walkerdine (1990) and Lawler (2000,
1999a, b), are mainly attributed to working-class subjects who are hierar-
chically positioned in relation to middle-class subjects. By not discussing
what the right pathways should be, it is clear that the decisions were jus-
tified within the naturalised family culture and social milieu contexts they
inhabited, which were mainly middle class (Barone 2006).
By presenting an ambition to become a medical doctor or dentist as a
form of envy, there is a danger of associating the women with a working-
class background. This would mark one’s narratives with a sense of ‘lack’.
Nina is characteristic of this form of narrative. She is the only woman
who worked as a lab technician before becoming a doctor. This issue was
reflected repeatedly in her narrative:
Mastoureh: Can you remember anything before becoming a medical

student?
Nina: Yes, I had a feeling of regret whenever I saw doctors, especially

female doctors. The medical students, when I saw them I got really upset.
I was saying to myself: ‘What did they have that I didn’t?’ I felt that they
were exceptional people.
How and why is this ambitious thinking represented as natural and nor-
mal in Iranian culture? What is the framework that naturalises the ambi-
tion to become a doctor for certain groups of people in Iran? The answer
would probably be that ambitions flourish not as a form of possibility but
as a destined pathway. As Foucault (1977) argues, processes of normali-

sation are the ways in which particular knowledges are made the norm,
thus concealing the origins and power relations at play. As Bourdieu
argues (1984), these should not be mistaken as a form of envy narra-
tive but as narratives of normalised characters that are exclusive to certain
groupings and to the children of certain families. Middle-class culture
(cultural capital) is used as a tool to cultivate this way of thinking.
Narratives that justify the value of medicine in Iranian culture are
important in constructing a middle-class self. Studying medicine, den-
tistry or obtaining a Ph.D. (in more general terms, becoming a doctor)
become classed values both in Iran and in the West because these values
create stark differences between the social position of those women who
are doctors and those who are not. This form of naturalising or normal-
ising values and rights in the context of specific characters or cultures is
related to the notion of autochthony developed by Yuval-Davis (2011).
She argues that the rights of people who are indigenous or autochthones
of a certain geographical land are understood only in relation to those
who are considered to be foreigners or allochthones. In agreement with
Yuval-Davis’s argument that belonging is naturalised in certain places
to give rights to groups, the normalisation of certain pathways indi-
cates that this route is not possible for everyone. Not everyone is capa-
ble of following such a route. These destined pathways bring to mind a
form of belonging that naturalises certain identities and membership to
groupings of people. In the following extract, for example, this form of
naturalisation is manifested in the language of fate or destiny. Maryam
discusses how her career was destined for her from the very beginning:
Mastoureh: Can you tell me what led you to study medicine?
Maryam: Since my childhood, I was destined to study medicine. In our

house, there was no other discussion. [Everyone knew that] ‘Maryam’s
going to become a doctor’. So from childhood I was practising injecting
because I was destined to become a doctor… [She laughs]. And then there
was the university entrance exam and I became the 57th student [high
ranking] in the country… (Emphasis mine)
These narratives are told in a ‘privilege-neutral sense’ as ordinary inci-

dents of life, as if no effort was made to ‘achieve’ them. In the above
extract, one gets the feeling that the events of Maryam’s life are
62 M. Fathi
happening without her knowing or deciding them actively. They are

shown as family traditions or destiny, as if a priori. Maryam, in the afore-
mentioned quotation, discusses how she was ‘destined’ to study medi-
cine to assert an important point of distinction. Medicine for her was
part of the process of growing up.
Finally, there is also an indication in the above stories of the way
things should have been and the unquestionability of these pathways.
Naturalisation and normalisation of class require a form of embar-
rassment in discussing class (Savage et al. 2001; see also Skeggs 1997,
2004). Normalisation is defined with the existence of the other. In the
following section, I discuss how a different character is used to define the
normal trajectories.
3.2.1 Lack of Ambition as Deviant

Archer et al. (2003) discuss how in Britain ambitions for higher educa-
tion are normalised within political discourse. Power relations that regu-
late institutions, as well as the institutions that legitimise that power, are
important in normalisation processes. There is a class-based valuation in
higher education that revolves around medicine and dentistry and, to a
lesser extent, pharmacy and Ph.D. degrees. These subject areas merit fur-
ther attention, not least because they reflect the persistence of a form of
inequality. I argue that in the process of normalising certain pathways,
some pathways need to be pathologised and shown to be unworthy and
‘incorrect’.
In the absence of having such an ambition, a person is pathologi-
cally represented as deviant. The value system within which these Iranian
women narrated their life trajectories in relation to others recognises
medicine and dentistry as a form of capital and differentiates between
doctors and others. These women usually compare themselves to their
non-doctor friends to show this differentiation and as evidence for their
claims of modernity, Westernisation and normality.
In the following extract, Farnaz compares herself to one of her friends
who was married at an early age and got divorced with two children after
21 years.
Farnaz: […] Erm, I have a friend, we have been friends since the age of
seven. Our basis [family background] was the same, erm… the same
school, the same neighbourhood. The only difference was that she got
married at the age of 20, she has two children now and after 21 years [of
marriage] she got divorced a few months ago. She went to Azad University
and studied biomedical sciences. And I did medicine… I don’t know why
I am telling you this… but our lives really changed. When you asked me
about the ways of living… with some of my friends when I got into medi-
cine, I developed worse relationships because I got accepted into medicine
[and they did not]. I am sure that was the reason. It can’t be anything else
and then, suddenly, she had two children and had to look after them as
well as her parents. Then I had my car and was going to different places
and having fun. And she disassociated herself from me. We were very good
friends, but this complicated things between us. That I do whatever I
want but she is badly stuck. I have studied medicine, and she has not. In
Iran, it is a big thing. I don’t care what other people want to think but
this [distinction] exists. It was really bad, and one of the reasons that she
got divorced was that she couldn’t get whatever she wanted in some ways
because she was under family pressure to marry.
The distinctions that Farnaz discusses above are important in under-

standing how she sees herself in the eyes of others such as her friends
(growing weak, broken relationships with non-doctor friends) and the
public (people in Iran). Farnaz believes that although the basis of their
lives was the same, there still remains a hierarchical level of understand-
ing between good education and bad education and between success and
failure. In this context, not every form of education is seen as a success
and divorce is seen as a failure for a woman in Iran. Success is portrayed
in terms of all the different capitals that Bourdieu (1984) discusses.
Success is a form of knowledge that can be counted strongly as cultural,
economic and social capital. Farnaz makes this differentiation between
herself and her friend in order to support the idea that their pathways
determine which lifestyle each person will lead later on in life. Similar
normalisation can be seen in the following narrative of Roya:
Roya: […] If you enter a group of people and someone is behaving in

some weird way and as we say, without class [in Farsi this means working-
class], if he or she is an ordinary person, maybe other people don’t say any-
thing. But imagine if this person is a doctor. Then everyone says, ‘Why is
this person doing this?’ because they have a different expectation of a doc-
tor. But the same behaviour seen from a teenager or from a secretary in an
office, maybe nobody even talks about it. You unconsciously have different
expectations of educated people.
64 M. Fathi
In this passage, by ‘ordinary person’ Roya means someone other than

a doctor. Although at the end of the quotation Roya talks generally
about educated people, earlier she specifies that a doctor’s behaviour is
expected to be different. The point she makes in this passage is that the
normalisation of doctors needs to be differentiated from that of others.
Pathologising others’ trajectories is a hegemonic formation of a hier-
archical positioning for doctors. For example, Monir pathologises the
impact of other immigrants on society in comparison to her own impact:
Monir: […] You see, if I were a housewife and imagine that I had a degree
too, okay, … or if I was a graduate who had to go and work in Safeway
or as a cleaner or in a nursery. Even though I had a degree and was, from
an educational point of view, higher than an English cleaner and I had
to work with him/her… I do not want to humiliate others, … but I had
to deal with those working classes or the benefit-receiving class here [in
Britain]. But now, for example, the fact that I am a doctor and do a job as
‘a doctor’ and my education and all that, all these help me to socialise with
others who are on my level… to be with others like me.
Monir’s othering not only differentiates doctors as a separate category,

but also places them hierarchically on a higher level than other occupa-
tional groupings. She also dismisses academic disciplines apart from med-
icine, associating them with receiving benefits, which to her is equal to
a low class location. Education that cannot be used in the job market is
described tacitly as a mark of disgrace, shame and deviance. As can be
seen here, there is a clear distinction between what Monir refers to as
‘a degree’ or other kinds of education than medicine and different jobs
described as hierarchically lower in value. There is an implication of devi-
ance and inferiority attached to certain jobs in such a classification. What
is important to note in all the above examples are the levels of distinction
that the labour market, as well as the normative and symbolic value sys-
tems, create in the formation of classes.
3.2.2 Not Discussing Class to Construct Classed Identity

After conducting various studies with professional Iranian migrants,
I realised that social class is usually accompanied by a sense of embar-
rassment. According to Savage et al. (2001), middle-class people are
frequently uncomfortable and embarrassed when talking about their
social class. These women’s understandings of their privileges and fam-

ily systems were important in the construction of their classed identi-
ties, but when discussing their middle-class positionings, they frequently
referred to their childhood activities, routines of life and the insepara-
ble aspiration to become a doctor without making explicit reference as
to how their ambition related to their family background and heritage.
They never explained class in relation to class itself; rather, they refrained
from talking about class characteristics and instead talked about class
outcomes!
I noticed that their narratives were marked with embarrassment when
they were characterising their middle-class lives. This was because they
did not want to discuss themselves as being middle-class. Discussing their
middle-class self would have undermined the authenticity of their classed
self and how their education was part of a tradition that, by itself, had
symbolic value in an Iranian exchange system. Their narratives of class
were mainly about education rather than class because an educated self
could be represented as a moral self, whereas a classed self could mean
a snobbish self. Looking at this extract, it is clear that Roxana’s narra-
tion is marked with embarrassment when material aspects of class are dis-
cussed. One main reason for this embarrassment is that talking about the
material value of commodities could be considered contrary to her intel-
lectual identity. The conversation below took place after I asked her to
describe her parents’ families and how she would evaluate her family’s
class position:
Roxana: Well, my father was a major general in the army and being a gen-
eral means a high social level… my mother was a teacher and a school
inspector. So, job-wise, she had a high position. From a family point of
view, my mother’s family were all Khans.4 My grandfather was a land-
owner. He was very rich. My mother’s family members all went to America
and Europe 70 or 80 years ago. They were people who had gone and been
educated in European universities at a time when people in Iran did not
go to universities at all. They were all very high-class people from a social
point of view. And then when there was feudalism in the past, these peo-
ple were landowners… It is interesting that I don’t generally talk about
these things. Because I think I don’t like to tell other people that I was this
and that. As we are talking about it here, I am telling you these things.
(Emphasis mine)
Mastoureh: Why don’t you like to discuss these things with others?
66 M. Fathi
Roxana: Because I think that I am confident with myself, I don’t need to

tell other people that I am this or that. Things like that. I think that from
my behaviour and speaking, it is apparent what sort of a person I am. I
don’t need to give an explanation to someone so that they don’t think
about me like this. (She laughs) (Emphasis mine)
In the above quotation, a clear form of embarrassment is present when

class is discussed. Roxana argues that she does not talk about class, which
she refers to as ‘these things’, because she believes that it is evident in
her behaviour and manners that she belongs to a middle-class or even a
bourgeois family. Her behaviour, manners and performances should tell
others who she is.
This is a vital point in the formation of class and gender that reveals
how femininity is formed through and by class (Skeggs 1997). In the
above segment of interview, Roxana mentions that it is only for the sake
of the interview topic that she discloses this much about her family’s
class. Otherwise, her classed self should be seen naturally through her
own career as a doctor and her behaviour as she has inherited it. In both
cases, the formation of classed identity is naturalised and normalised.
3.2.3 Embarrassment and Normalisation

Talking about class was not always easy. For Roxana, who was from an
aristocratic family, talking about class provoked a sense of embarrass-
ment. It should be noted that Roxana was not trying to communicate
any sense of shame about her class position or the background from
which she came, but she felt that she ought to tell me these things
because of the topic of conversation. She did, however, remain commit-
ted to the idea that the material aspects of her class and her family’s class
were ‘normal’ to her; she was reluctant to talk about something which,
to her, seemed natural, trivial and common-sense. In other circumstances
she was not ‘that sort of person’ to brag about herself and her family to
others. Of course, the meaning of class for her is constructed by juxta-
posing herself alongside others, because later in the extract she argues
that she is concerned about how she appears in front of others, not her
family.
Roxana talks about how, as a middle-class subject, she has to be mod-
est and moral. She is concerned that because she has enough confidence
in herself as a doctor, she is desperate not to seek help from her family
background. In addition, she speaks about the pathways of becoming a

doctor as a descendent of an aristocratic family. By talking about her rela-
tives who went to Europe to study 70 or 80 years ago, she tries to create
a subject position of a woman doctor who lives in Europe but is not the
first generation in her family to have a European education and to estab-
lish this as a long tradition. This is significant in relation to the way she
sees her social class and herself positioned historically and how certain
practices become repeated to reiterate her inherited class. Although the
revolution changed the course of history, and the social classes in Iran
experienced an acute change in their organisation (Kian-Thiebaut 1998),
the routes of educated and middle-class subjects remain distinct from
those of the working classes.
The specific culture to which Roxana is referring seems to be a prop-
erty belonging to her, as something which was inherited by her. Lawler
(2008), in her analysis of middle-class culture, draws attention to the
workings of privilege in the context of ‘normality’ and ‘rightness’. This
is something that can be read through Roxana’s narrative about her
middle-class heritage. Although set in another context, Roxana’s story
is expressive of feudalism before the revolution and shows how distinctly
traditional society in Iran was separated into landowners and peasants.
In modern times, though, it is her own positioning as a doctor that gen-
erates a symbolic value for ‘who she is’. The past is mobilised in light
of these women’s current positions as high-earning doctors working in
England. Skeggs (2005a, p. 47) argues that ‘culture can be converted
into a highly mobile commodity and is used effectively as the sign/sym-
bolic economy of transnational advertising’. Even though it is about a
glorified past, a form of recognised history for the audience.
Khorshid: By upper-middle-class I meant that, for example, my father had

a very good financial status. We never had financial problems. I mean, I
do not recall [us ever having] any financial problems during my child-
hood. For example, ever since my childhood I have been skiing during
the winter. I am talking 35 years ago now. Do not look at now. 35 years
ago is a long time back. We had a villa in the [northern Iranian] resorts.
We had a place in Damavand. We had two houses in Tehran. We lived in
Shemiran [an old, posh neighbourhood]. Our house in the beginning was
on Darband Street and is still there. For example, we had a swimming pool
at home. We had sauna at home. Nobody would ever think that 35 years
ago someone could have such a life. So, … for example, we had maids. But
68 M. Fathi
having maids was routine at the time. Erm, we had servants. I think the
reason was because my dad was in contact with Europe more. And we had
also travelled a lot to Europe….
Khorshid elaborates on her childhood home after I asked about the char-
acteristics of her childhood familial home. She narrated with some hesi-
tation, as if she was aware that this much of detail may not be what I
am looking for. What was presented above about Skeggs’ arguments of
capital is here relevant to Roxana and Khorshid’s position talking about
their glorified past, sense of embarrassment and familial connections to
Europe. These accounts are also reminiscent of Lisa Rofel’s (1999) argu-
ment about modernity (in the context of China) that is sought passion-
ately by those who had a form of relationship with Europe or the US
in the form of a colonialised past that transcends to present positions.
These women’s translocational class positions is embedded in their hier-
archical class positions they narrate of their families in the past and their
relationships with servants, maids and their semi-feudal or transnational
merchant positions that allowed for such privileges. Although their posi-
tion as doctors is valued at present time, it is through narratives about
historical past and their long-standing familial connections to Europe
that they maintain their social class across generations, even though they
are embarrassed to refer to that directly. I argue that although cultural
capital is translocational and can be recognised within the migratory
context, certain aspects of class are not found valuable or meaningful
for all audiences. Both Roxana and Khorshi referred to me, as the audi-
ence, in terms of my knowledge of Iran during their childhood and its
seclusion from the world, as emphasising the value of these transnational
links. However, this aspect of class may not be found as valuable for a
British audience. Therefor in their narratives, Roxana and Khorshid feel
that there is no need to reiterate their class backgrounds because they, in
their present status, embody the characteristics of modern middle-class
women in Britain.
3.2.4 Westernisation as a ‘Normal’ Pathway

There was a lot of overlap between normalisation discourses and
Westernisation. In other words, some of these women thought of their
behaviour, upbringing and choice of academic subject as modern and
Western. This characterisation of their pathways as Westernised was in
line with their migration to a Western country later on in life. Women

like Maryam, Niloufar, Farnaz, Monir, Batool, Nina, Shirin and Giti
believed that they were Westernised subjects because they could syn-
chronise easily with their surroundings. For example, Shirin answered my
question in relation to how she had coped with cultural differences when
she arrived in Britain by saying that because she had had a Western life-
style in Iran, Britain was no different for her.
These narratives of Westernisation are significant because they are
contrary to the context of Iran, where there is a constant insistence from
state propaganda on opposing the West and the Westernisation of peo-
ple. The Iranian ruling state consistently limits people’s access to the
internet, satellite TV and Western-based media. These sources of infor-
mation are considered haram and in opposition to the Islamic values.
Although millions of people have access to internet and satellite TVs,
they risk being arrested if they are found to have used them. There have
been examples of footballers (all male), singers inside the country (all
male) and actors (male and female) in Iran being reprimanded or sus-
pended from their careers for having a certain hairstyle, tattoos or wear-
ing certain clothes seen to be contradicting the Islamic values promoted
by the state.
Being ‘Western’ in this way in a society where one has to be Islamic
and dress modestly in the social arena is an act of differentiation. The
distinction these women try to maintain as doctors both inside and out-
side Iran is related to the ways in which they presented themselves as dif-
ferent to others in terms of Westernised lifestyles. For example through
listening to rock music:
Setareh: In terms of music, my passion, was to listen to Rock music. I

mean when I was like 16 or 17. My sister had borrowed this cassette from
one her friends, and fell in love with that. Didn’t listen to Iranian music
since then.
Farnaz: I had a car, I was just driving everywhere on my own listening to

Rock music, this is right at the beginning of the revolution, right? So it
wasn’t something that was seen as normal. I was independent from early on.
This may be the reason why most of these women say that their family
values are different to those of other Iranian families.
70 M. Fathi
Farnaz and Shirin talk about this a lot. Farnaz was brought up in a
wealthy family who had servants and a chauffeur. She used to go to an
international school and had the privilege of studying in English in Iran.
Her brother was sent to Britain at the age of 14 and she always planned
to follow him afterwards. The way she uses her ambitions of migrating
to a Western country in order to differentiate between herself and her
friends in Iran is characteristic of the importance of such a lifestyle in the
normalisation of the self:
Farnaz: […] My brother came here in 1984 and because of that we were
coming [here] almost every year. And because of this, it was not like
I did not know anything about life here. And because of my knowledge
of English, I can tell you that, that’s something that my dad used to tell
me: that I am Westernised. I was more Western than Eastern. The way I
was thinking, erm, yes, my way of thinking. Although I always had this
Western way of thinking, coming here once a year and staying for a month
and going to museums and shopping is different to coming here to live.
Farnaz explains how a ‘Westernised’ self has been formed since her child-
hood. She differentiates between herself and others by referring to her
father’s comments about her. There is a link between this identification
of a Western self and the pathways that she followed to become a doc-
tor in Britain. This is in contrast to what she said earlier in the inter-
view in relation to her appearance. Farnaz has a darker complexion than
other interviewees and she refers to this issue several times during the
conversation. She tells a few stories, tinged with racism, about how she
was mistaken by her patients for a Pakistani or Indian doctor or how she
was rejected for a job by some white English doctors. By talking about
being Westernised she refers to aspects that make her different to people
around her in Iran. In fact, by discussing Westernisation she refers to a
form of individuality as opposed to collectivity. The former is attributed
to the West and the latter to the ‘Iranian’ lifestyle.
Mastoureh: What do you mean when you say that you were different?
Farnaz: For example, in terms of the freedom I had at home, I could come
and go whenever I wanted to, nobody questioned me about this, I had
my own car and I had my own life and… I was reading English novels and
these sort of things. I was different.
This form of differentiation seems natural to Farnaz. Her understanding

of her social positioning as an independent woman in Britain requires a
certain degree of comparison between herself and her friends to explain
how and in what ways she was ‘different’. Similarly Shirin was also refer-
ring to Westernised lifestyles as a characteristic of her modern thinking:
Shirin: When I was dating my then future husband, we were both in top
universities in Iran. So I took him home, cause my dad wanted to see him
and he took out his shoes, you know, like other traditional families. And I
was surprised why he did it. My family was quite modern, we were walking
with shoes on at home. You know.
These references to a Western lifestyle are important in some of these

women’s claims to their positions as Western subjects in their current
positions as doctors. What is important though is the affinity that is nar-
rated as evidence of a long history of distinction between their families
and those families who have stayed in Iran.
3.3 The Making of a Moral Self

These Iranian migrant women, in their quest to establish an independ-
ent identity from their husbands and fathers, portray a respectable way
of life; hence, respectability manifests as a major form of making the self.
Respectability and morality constitute class identity. Skeggs (1997), in
her research with working-class women, argues how making a respect-
able self is a core aspect of making class in their lives and explains how
they achieve this by studying courses in the caring field. As Skeggs
(1997, p. 1) argues, respectability has always been one of ‘the most ubiq-
uitous signifiers of class’. In later works (2011, 2005b, 2004), she pin-
points in Britain the notion of respectability through affect and the ways
in which classed selves are portrayed via body language and behaviour
to create distinctive boundaries between the self and others. Making a
respectable self is part of the pathway to becoming a doctor in Iran, and
it has been a major driving force in the creation not only of a knowledge-
able person but also of one who is respectable. The basis of becoming
respectable is about, on the one hand, representing the self as moral and,
on the other hand, being an established person financially. The previ-
ous section argued about the pathologisation of individuals who lack the
ambition and trajectory to become a doctor; this form of pathologisation
72 M. Fathi
is formed within a child from the very beginning, as in the cases of

Maryam and Khorshid. These processes of self-formation are normalised
within a system of power relations that also defines ‘respectability’.
My argument is, firstly, that it is within a recognised system of val-
ues that these normalisations take place and become meaningful; hence,
these women make sense of their selves when they normalise their own
life trajectories and pathologise others. This is mainly because by doing
so they create a powerful class positioning for themselves, one which
is not shared by others. Secondly, they create a guilt-free middle-class
self that is not discussed and is thus made invisible. By doing this, they
become respectable subjects who, although embarrassed to discuss their
privileges, know very well how to perform those privileged lives (see
Savage et al. 2001).
3.3.1 Respect
Respect is a word that is used a lot in relation to the medical profes-
sion both in Iran and in the West. I differentiate between two types of
respect. The first type of respect is usually narrated by these women,
while the second type is performed. The narrated form of respect is
not related to the consumerist culture of goods and commodities: it is
related to a set of values that prefer science over consumerism. For exam-
ple, the following extract from Setareh shows respect in its first meaning.
I asked Setareh why she chose medicine.
Setareh: In Iranian society it is valued, for example, when you tell someone
that you are a doctor, people respect you… well… everywhere it has value
to be a doctor.
Respect here is orientalised: it is put into the context of Iran and is con-
sidered different from respect in the West. This point is also made by
other women—that doctors are different in Iran because medicine, den-
tistry and even a high level of education (Ph.D.) are valued there.
Mastoureh: What is it in Iranian society that encourages people to study

medicine?
Roxana: […] the situation of doctors is better than [that of] others.
Socially they have some respect, I don’t know how it is now, and finan-
cially they can have a better life.
The notion of respect is developed through narratives that portray medi-

cine as being based on moral values. It is about people, ‘cures’, goodwill
and societal benefits from certain professions. Monir, for example, clearly
explains what she means by respect and by the moral aspects of her job.
Monir: [By becoming a doctor] you feel that you become very close to
people’s lives, their honour, their money, and all these change you in terms
of personality and [allow you to grow] as a doctor. You see, medicine is
really [about] when someone comes to you and leaves her or his body in
your hands. Whether you are in the psychiatric ward or wherever…, the
person comes and leaves you with all her feelings. It means that you are
really [close] to him or her.
In the above text, Monir talks about the interaction between a physician
and a patient. This relationship is framed within an institutional order.
Her perspective on her position as a trustworthy person is important
because it shows how she is in control of her role through the way in
which she is positioned within the relations. The above extract relates
to the politics of respectability. Monir refers to her access, her ability
and her satisfaction in becoming nearer to people’s untold, inaccessible
things. These are their stories, their secrets and their lives. I believe that
her words reveal the underlying workings of how respectability is con-
structed within a society. She refers to her facial features and her physi-
cal appearance, and this is the form of respectability discussed by Skeggs
(1997). Medicine is what she believes she had to do rather than poli-
tics. The means to study politics were not available to her, as she explains
later, so she chose the ‘second most important’ subject she could think
of: medicine.
Monir: […] Then my [specialist] field in high school was experimental sci-
ence and, in Iran, when you are in experimental sciences in high school
you only have certain choices; there is only medicine, dentistry, mid-
wifery, nursing, physiotherapy or some others that you can choose. Then I
thought, ‘Oh yeah, I have to have a job to give me the same reputation [as
a prime minister] in order to help me to help others’.
74 M. Fathi
Monir’s characterisation of medicine is set, remarkably, within the con-

text of her upbringing in the early period after the revolution, where
poverty, chaos and inattention to women’s issues were rife. Like the
other women in this study, she sought a form of security. She thought
of medicine as a political vessel that could take her to the unknown
areas of a person’s life in addition to making her secure in a turbulent
atmosphere. She therefore converts her childhood destitution into a phil-
anthropic act of studying something that makes her into a powerful sub-
ject. Unlike all the other women, who did not narrate any memories of
poverty, prostitution or drug addiction in their stories, Monir uses these
reasons to explain why she was so fond of a subject which could ‘cure’
others and take her nearer to them. These women relate respect and the
value of medicine to Iranian or Eastern culture and some even relate it to
dictatorships. For example, Farnaz elaborates on why she thinks medi-
cine is represented in Iran as a respectable subject area.
Farnaz: I think it is related to our society, because we have always had [a]
dictatorship in Iran.
In this context, the notion of cultural capital is an important tool for

understanding this subject. The women use narratives that are marked by
culture, history and politics to explain their professions; however, values,
especially the value of medicine, do not form a clear concept for these
women. Some of them do not know why medicine is so important in
Iranian society, while others, such as Monir, explain its value in terms of
the sensitive nature of the work, the usefulness of the person to society
and its relationship to a patient’s health.
Monir: I liked it. I liked the subject. At that time, I [felt] that by studying
[medicine] one [could] serve people, you know. I had some sort of phil-
anthropic [desire]… [and wished to] deal with different ways of thinking,
with professors. In hospitals, you have to deal with people and then you
feel that you become very close to people’s lives….
The making of respectable subjects happens within normalising dis-

courses of who is in and who is out of the medical profession. The main
reason that such a discourse can be successful is that these women are
people who have been accepted as institutionally legitimate doctors in
Britain.5 This is how medicine or other middle-class professions used as a
means of attaining the respect. Here ‘need’ in a hierarchical is important

to be analysed. The fact that quite a few of these women referred to this
sentence ‘they want us in Iranian society’, ‘they need us here’ shows the
urge to prove one’s usefulness both societies in Iran and in Britain.
Although the discussions about the importance of the medical pro-
fession and respect can be found in Western discourses, here it is an
orientalised concept. The notion of respect is converted into a form of
cultural capital, because the narratives equate medicine with respect-
ability. These women relate the ‘respect’ and ‘value’ of medicine to the
‘Iranian’ or ‘Eastern’ culture and even to ‘dictatorships’, however, they
also emphasise their Westernised lifestyle from early years of growing up.
The concepts around social value and respect in relation to medicine,
dentistry and Ph.D. degrees are used as a form of capital, which was
passed on to them by their parents (Barone 2006). However, it is not the
capital they inherit that makes them think of medicine as a respectable
subject; instead, they have learned how doctors, dentists or academics are
perceived and recognised as legitimate and respectable professionals both
in Iran and Britain. As the formation of a respectable self in Iran dif-
fers from that in Britain, they apply this tool differently in the two con-
texts in order to make themselves respectable and moral subjects in both
countries. The main difference is that in Iran they use their profession
to be seen as equal to men because they have fewer rights as citizens; in
Britain, they use their profession to show that they are respectable immi-
grants in what appears to be an anti-immigrant context. Respect, there-
fore, works within the power relations in which these women are located
and experience and narrate their lives. The degree of respectability felt is
related to belonging, which will be discussed fully later on in this book.
3.4 Conclusion
In this chapter, two important issues relating to pathways of growing
up were discussed. The first was the Islamic regime’s governmental pro-
grammes for higher education and the restriction of women to gender-
segregated arenas. The second was a form of classed governmentality
within families. Ambitions for particular forms of higher education and
the creation of normalised selves are promoted within the family sphere.
This is how the family institution maintains control over daughters’ lives
to ensure a future classed life. Within the latter strategy, three different
processes involved in the formation of these women’s classed pathways of
76 M. Fathi
becoming women doctors, or khanoom doctor ha, were discussed. These

three processes are surveillance, normalising and moralising. Regulation
and surveillance are exercised by families, especially mothers, who cre-
ate and govern ambitions for their children, particularly their daugh-
ters, who will then go on to achieve or maintain a middle-class status.
In these narratives, these pathways are normalised and depicted as des-
tinies (Maryam’s story) both in middle-class and working-class families
(Monir’s story).
The second section on normalisation addressed migrant women’s
tendency to refrain from discussing class because it is trivial for them.
Normalisation makes these pathways ‘part of’ the process of formation
of classed selves. Similarly to Savage (2000), Savage et al. (2001) and
Archer (2011), who argue that the middle-classes do not discuss but per-
form class, I argued that discussing class would indicate that a form of
consciousness was present that might represent a type of envy or a desire
to become a classed subject. Such a narrative could imply a working-class
background or thought, and hence is avoided.
Additionally, a Westernised lifestyle is one aspect in the normalisa-
tion of pathways to becoming a doctor for the women who emigrated
from Iran. Some of these women, like Farnaz and Shirin, differentiated
between their Westernised and non-Westernised selves. The former is
associated with migration, becoming a doctor and success; the latter with
staying in Iran, not becoming a doctor and failure. Most placed them-
selves as the former and usually placed non-doctors as the latter. Western
individualism is considered an inherent form of classed pathway. This is
why migration to Western countries is considered a classed act. Because
of migration, social class becomes translocated (crossing the borders and
the boundaries of class meanings in Iran).
In the last section on moralisation, the formation of a moral self as
a classed self was shown. Respectability and the formation of a moral
self has also been a major function in the making of classed subjects. As
previously discussed, for these women respectability is different in Iran
and Britain, where these women’s social locations and the symbolic
power attached to these different locations have changed from one con-
text to the other. Becoming doctors enabled them to become respect-
able women in Iran and respectable migrants in the West. I argue that
these women’s pathways as doctors are normalised because by becoming
doctors they gained both institutional and regulatory power in both Iran
and Britain. This legitimised the autonomy of their gendered and raced
identities. Normalisation also gave them a powerful stance within the
gendered understanding of professions in Iranian society. Normalising
their pathways, by which I mean normalising middle-class routes, also
made their belonging easier within the anti-immigrant context of Britain.
Class, as a form of exclusionary power, becomes meaningful when
individuals naturalise both their pathways to becoming classed subjects
and their performative practices. As Butler (1993, 1999) argues in rela-
tion to gender, the formation of class identities happens through show-
ing gender as natural to certain bodies. These women’s local knowledge
of classification is formed by power relations in Iran and the West. In
both contexts, the medical professions and academic positions are con-
sidered as a form of capital that can be exchanged in the labour mar-
ket for a much higher status than that associated with other jobs. As
Bourdieu argues, individuals’ access to particular practices and resources
depends on their location, which is always relative to that of others
(Bourdieu 1998, quoted in Sayer 2011, p. 11). The way in which indi-
viduals position themselves within these discourses is strongly bound to
the discursive practices to which they have had access (locality of class)
and how they situate themselves within localities in terms of gender,
sexuality, etc. These women have gained ‘local knowledge’ from these
discourses and act according to their understanding of them (their situ-
atedness); class and class mobility are therefore local and situated. These
women regard the medical profession as a form of local knowledge and
a situated act to which other people do not have access. This is why they
all said ‘I did it’ instead of ‘I could do it’.
In this way, life-chances, social exclusions and intersections are directly
related to cultural capital (becoming doctors). These women’s meaning-
making of cultural capital is an important part of the formation of new
generations of Iranian middle-class women. This explains how the con-
cepts of ‘kelas’ (class), ‘ba kelas’ (= with class) and ‘bi kelas’ (= without
class) refer to a similar concept of cultural capital. Furthermore, these
concepts are local and situated and have different meanings in Iran and
Britain. The theme of the next chapter is how class performances are
context- and culture-based.
78 M. Fathi
Notes
1. Refer to Chap. 2 for a more contextual discussion of studying medicine in
Iran.
2. Unusually, Batool’s mother was a surgeon.
3. ‘Culture’ is an ambiguous term that refers to a vast array of concepts.
When I speak of ‘culture’ here I do not intend to essentialise and reduce
the concept. Branding an entity as Eastern or Western is problematic as
there is no such binary division between what is referred to as East and
West. These notions are formed in an imaginary fashion with political aims
similar to the ways in which Iranian and non-Iranian are formed.
4. Khan(s) in Iran were a traditional class of landowners and village owners
and had a large number of people working for them. Khans used to have
political and social power. For more on Khans in Iran see ‘Tribe and State
in Revolutionary Iran: The Return of the Qashqa’i Khans’ by Beck (1980).
5. They are recognised as fit and suitable for work by the General Medical
Council (GMC). Passing the exams and having an accredited medical qual-
ification is not a guarantee of a job offer (See http://www.gmc-uk.org/
doctors/before_you_apply/imgs.asp).
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CHAPTER 4
Classed Place-Making
In the processes involved in constructing an identity, spaces and places

matter (Massey 1994). Although our lives are becoming more mobile,
we increasingly identify ourselves with a place (Massey et al. 1998;
Skeggs 2004) . The ‘place perspectives’ (Agnew 1989) of classed under-
standings of life should, therefore, be discussed; this is particularly rel-
evant to those whose lives are seen as mobile, i.e. migrants. Within the
processes of mobility, the desire to make a home (Brah 1996) is associ-
ated with intense feelings of safety and security, a person’s belonging and
the desire to be recognised within a social group and geographical space.
For migrants (as for anyone), the processes of positioning within hegem-
onic class relations are spatialised. In other words, we need to make sense
of spaces and places in order to identify where we want to make a home
or what we call a home, a comfortable place or a hostile place. Places
are practised spaces (Merrifield 1993, p. 522) with historical as well as
political meaning. They are spaces that are inhabited and are not passive
in the processes of self-identification. As such, the lived and acted experi-
ences of a place and their relationship to political and social domains are
challenging and remain a major concern when talking about the perfor-
mances that form and are meaningful in a place. Lefebvre (1991) dis-
tinguishes between the ‘consumption of a space that produces surplus
value’ and another space that produces only enjoyment and is therefore
‘unproductive’ (Lefebvre 1991, pp. 359–360). Massey (1994) argues
that places can be thought of as meeting places rather than areas with
boundaries around them. She argues that places:

82 M. Fathi
can be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and

understandings, but where a large proportion of those relations, experi-
ences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what
we happen to define for that moment as the place itself, whether that be
a street, region or even a continent. And this, in turn, allows a sense of
place [that] is extroverted, includes a consciousness of its links with the
wider world and is integrated in a positive way with the global and the
local (Massey 1994, pp. 154–155).
Focusing on this approach to understanding spaces as non-static and

passive localities and their effect on making one’s identity (after which
they are called ‘places’), this chapter is dedicated to the analysis of these
women’s spatial experiences of class. Migrants make choices and negoti-
ate about where to live, work and spend their time within the boundaries
of their local knowledges of the new setting. This decision-making is, to
a great extent, based on classed understandings and perceptions. Classed
places here refer to those spaces that are chosen, such as a home, neigh-
bourhood, work or leisure setting, and are characterised as ‘English’.
This choice of ‘English’ space is made intentionally in order to attach
classed (as well as racialised) meanings to places associated with ‘superior’
taste, in comparison to individuals’ taste that is identified with the white
working-class populations and Iranian working-class migrants.
4.1 Diasporic Spaces
This could be extended to less powerful groups of migrants too, such as
refugees, asylum seekers or Iranians affiliated with the Iranian govern-
ment both before and after the Islamic revolution. These affiliations are
usually understood within the multiplicity of signs, slogans, pictures and
even the bodily behaviours of individuals. In fact, many Iranians avoid
being in spaces where other Iranians gather. This isolation is seen as a
way not only to integrate and be part of society but also to be English.
For Maryam, spaces meant a lot. Throughout her interview, she
talked frequently about spaces such as her living room and her work-
place, as well as her desire to leave her various places in Iran. She viewed
Iranian society in its entirety as a prison, as a confined space from which
she had run away. What was most interesting, however, was the point she
made about being in spaces that are characterised as white English and
middle class. Maryam was a consultant, living in a large five-bedroomed
4 CLASSED PLACE-MAKING 83
detached house in a suburban area. The house had a driveway and, when
I arrived, two four-wheel drive cars were parked in front of it, one of
which belonged to one of her children. She became a senior consultant
shortly (three years) after moving to Britain and had managed to pur-
chase the large property. She had two daughters, both of whom studied
at well-established universities in the UK. We were sitting in her living
room, drinking Iranian tea and eating a cake that I had bought, when
Maryam told me about her feelings on different spaces.
Maryam: In Britain, there are communities with a lot of Iranians: I do not

like it. It takes me back to the Islamic Republic. It suffocates me.
(Silence)
Mastoureh: Is it only because of this that you don’t like to be with

Iranians? For example, the Iranian doctors in Britain don’t work with the
Islamic Republic.
Maryam: The association of ideas [suffocates me]. Do you know what it

means? They associate [with the Islamic regime] for me… Sometimes I
[think] I wanted to run away from the position I had and come here; I felt
at the beginning that it was either this or a kind of defence mechanism…
But it is the problem. Look, [it is as if], for example, you have a beautiful
doll and a dog comes and takes away your doll. [Afterwards], any time a
dog passes you or you hear a dog barking you remember the doll but also
that the doll was taken away from you. For me, you know, I strived really
hard for that position and all the things I had and, in a way, I felt that
the Iranian system was responsible for my doll. Because of that, I am not
relaxed. I am not comfortable. Let’s put it this way: I am not comfortable
[with meeting Iranians].
Mastoureh: When you see them you become uneasy?
Maryam: I don’t know why but yes, I become uneasy. For example, some
time ago we went to a Zoroastrian ceremony. It was one of their religious
ceremonies. When we arrived, we saw that there was a picture of [the]
Shah and the Crown Prince [the Shah’s son] and the anthem of those peri-
ods was playing. Although we had paid for tickets to enter, we walked out
of the room. We said that we could not stay here and left. We had gone all
the way to North London but we came back immediately.
(Silence)
84 M. Fathi
This sense of discomfort at the presence of different Iranian politi-

cal groups can also be seen in others’ narratives. The long conversation
with Maryam above indicates that the lived practices in a given space can
make certain groups call it home and force others to run away from it.
In general, the dispersed lives of Iranians in the diaspora (Higgins 2004)
are indicative of the importance of spaces in their understandings of
life outside Iran. Social spaces that are shared between politically affili-
ated groups are found to be full of tension. A lack of common ideology
makes many Iranians uncomfortable and, as such, these places turn into
politically driven spaces where power relations permeate and drive some
people out. This is particularly evident in the protests organised outside
Iran, where different groups oppose each other. Here, Maryam mentions
being uncomfortable around two groups with opposing ideas: those affil-
iated to the Shah’s regime (before 1979) and those to the Islamic regime
(after 1979). As such, she is referring to her desire to be in a space free
from these ideological positionings. This sense of unbelonging is, how-
ever, not experienced in relation to her workspace. It is evident in the
continuation of her narrative about the contrast between her workplace
and her neighbourhood that both are mainly white middle-class spaces.
Mastoureh: You mentioned what you think about other Iranians here, but
can you tell me about your feelings on living here amongst people that you
don’t know.
Maryam: It is not unknown. My workplace is very perfect and we are like

a community there. Everybody… it is like a village [neighbourhood] here.
All our neighbours are our friends. We have gatherings, we know about
each other. For example, if the next door neighbour is going away tomor-
row… she drops a card [to tell me that] that she will be away. I leave the
key with her [so that she can] water the plants here [when I am away]. It’s
like a community, which I did not have in Iran. In Tehran, I did not have
this community. I was a stranger in my own city. Here, I don’t have this
feeling about other Iranians, unlike you. When there is a huge gathering of
Iranians, I feel [estranged]. I do not feel like that about the Iranians them-
selves. I really enjoy being with Iranians. Sometimes we sit with a friend
and talk about childhood memories and high school and we enjoy it really,
but the atmosphere is not nice.
These places to which Maryam refers are strictly not where the Iranian
community lives in the UK. The importance of a space is discussed in
relation to the residents occupying these spaces, the values attached

to agents and the habitus associated to them. According to Massey
(1994), what gives a place its specificity is not its ‘internalised history’
but the fact that it is constructed out of ‘the constellation of social rela-
tions meeting and weaving together at a particular locus’ (Massey 1994,
p. 154). Maryam locates these subjects within the wider discourses
around integration and assimilation and within the racial hierarchies and
political agendas of the Islamic regime, even linking them to her memo-
ries of the revolution and life before 1979 in Iran when she was growing
up as a girl. This is where her understanding of that particular diasporic
space interlocks with the local and global networks that make that space
unique for her (in a negative way). She does not want to be reminded of
certain places, perhaps because they are reminiscent of painful eras. Her
accounts of her choice of location are intersected with race and ethnicity,
political interest, pre-migration experiences, her being a doctor and her
being a woman, feelings of alienation and, at times, feelings of being at
home in the neighbourhood in which she lives and her place of work.
As such, places are a distinct aspect of class relations because classed
understandings that are often thought of hierarchically are interplayed
within these loci. Places are in active interplay with any other social loca-
tion such as gender, race, disability etc. Here, though, the focus is on the
classed formation of spaces and their ability to transform the narratives of
migrants’ experiences. For ease of discussion, the classed spaces narrated
above are discussed in two separate locations: firstly, in those spaces that
traverse national borders (i.e. Iran and the UK) and that require a binary
and a comparative framework in these women’s narratives; and, secondly,
in more local neighbourhoods, schools or houses that have classed con-
notations in both Iran and Britain, these are all prominent places in
which the women remembered their practices.
4.2 Countries
The first section refers to a transnational knowledge of contexts that
are divided by official discourses around borders and cultures where the
global movement across borders seems to be a classed act. These narra-
tives refer to lives ‘here’ and ‘there’, to British and Iranian spaces.
Attributions to certain aspects of global migration were counted as
classed narratives. In the section on childhood stories and growing up,
what was characteristic of these women’s attempts to make sense of class
86 M. Fathi
was the importance of their educational aspiration to become a khanoom

doktor; however, one other implicit marker of the middle-class status
of a family was its connection to Europe and the West. Several of these
women constructed their familial trajectories in terms of their access
to Europe during their childhood. Khorshid was quite characteristic of
such attribution. All through her interview, she mentioned that she was
brought up between Iran and Europe. She was indeed in a high position
after migrating as a foreign doctor to Britain, but her understanding of
class was based on her early childhood memories of being brought up in
Britain.
Khorshid: Our family was relatively upper-middle-class. Erm, my father

was working with some foreign companies and at that time he was the
manager of a petrochemical centre; because of that, we used to go to
Europe a lot. … in a way, the last time I came here [Britain] was the same
year as the revolution and I was going to primary school here, so we lived
between England and Tehran. When I went back after living in England,
the revolution had happened and I was nine. And, erm, no, no, sorry.
When I went back after living in England and it was the revolution, I was
in the first year of secondary school, so I was 12 at the time, about 11 or
12….
On a macro-scale, having access to Europe has been discussed in Iranian

literature as a way forward towards modernity although, at same time, it
is condemned for taking away the identity of future Iranian generations.
As also pointed out in the previous chapter, I was curious what this con-
nection to Europe meant to Khorshid’s family in Iran. I asked her:
Mastoureh: You referred to your family as an upper-middle-class family.

Can you explain this more?
Khorshid: By upper-middle-class I meant that, for example, my father had

a very good financial status. We never had financial problems. I mean, I
do not recall [us ever having] any financial problems during my child-
hood. For example, ever since my childhood I have been skiing during
the winter. I am talking 35 years ago now. Do not look at now. 35 years
ago is a long time back. We had a villa in the [northern Iranian] resorts.
We had a place in Damavand. We had two houses in Tehran. We lived in
Shemiran [an old, posh neighbourhood]. Our house in the beginning was
on Darband Street and is still there. For example, we had a swimming pool
at home. We had sauna at home. Nobody would ever think that 35 years
ago someone could have such a life. So, […] for example, we had maids.
But having maids was routine at the time. Erm, we had servants. I think
the reason was because my dad was in contact with Europe more. And we
had also travelled a lot to Europe….
Khorshid is contextualising the importance of classed activities and the

spaces she lived her in during her early life by telling me not to ‘look
at now’. This sentence is narrated straightaway, right after the emphasis
she places on ‘skiing’ and the expensive sports that belong to the upper
classes who live north of Tehran. Skiing is still counted as an exclusive
activity; however, Khorshid implies how exclusive skiing was in the past
by referring to how common it has become these days, even though it is
not commonplace in reality. The other spaces she mentions that all have
class connotations are: Damavand, northern resorts and her family’s two
houses in Tehran and Europe. What is important in Khorshid’s narrative
is how she uses spaces to illustrate her family’s class affiliation, taste and
financial status.
Europe in this context is not only a marker of a classed identity but
is associated with a particular grouping in society. Connections to the
West are important here because for Khorshid and the other women who
mentioned Europe in their narratives, only the upper middle classes had
the access and the knowledge required to be connected with Europe
in the 1960s and 1970s. As such, referring to Europe is an important
marker of a classed identity and the high social class of a family. This
also becomes evident in a conversation between Solmaz and her sister,
who was sitting at the end of the corridor whilst we were talking in her
house. This is the conversation that took place between them whilst I
was recording the interview.
Mastoureh: Can you give me examples? What did you do for your holi-
days? Or how did you spend your money? I mean, something like that.
Solmaz: Hmm, travelling abroad.
(Solmaz’s sister shouts from the other side of the living room: We did not
go abroad.)
(Solmaz responds to her: No, we were going abroad. Europe.)
(Solmaz then turns to me and continues.)

88 M. Fathi
Solmaz: Yes, for some time [after the revolution], you could not go
abroad. It was the case for every one though. Everyone was equal in that
no-one could leave Iran.
(Her sister interferes again and says: But we were not that well off [that we
could] go to Europe.)
(Solmaz looks at her and turns back to me.)
Solmaz: No, no. The time that we did not spend our holidays in Europe
was the time that no-one in Iran went to Europe, in the 80s.
The reason that Solmaz mentions this is because before this conversa-
tion I asked her to explain what she meant by coming from an upper
middle-class family. As can be seen from this conversation, Solmaz, who
is considerably older than her sister, reminds us (me and her sister) that
Europe was deemed a hierarchically more advanced society but was a
space that was taken away from Iranians at the beginning of the post-
revolution era. This sense of deprivation around being unable to travel
outside Iran was what made Europe ever more important in the con-
struction of a global middle-class identity. Having links to Europe was, in
itself, seen as a sign of success or of middle- and upper-classness in fami-
lies. Other women also referred to Europe (or the West in general) as a
space to which they and their family members were affiliated.
Shirin: My father was earning well, but [we spent] a lot too. We were
going to Europe and travelling to different places. [My parents] had a
habit of spending and still do. We had a good life, we did not lack any-
thing… I told you, I went to America at the age of 16 so I know a bit
about what it is like to go to another space.
4.3 Schools
Another important characteristic of spatial lived experiences in construct-
ing classed narratives was the importance of foreign schools in Iran. The
childhood period in these women’s lives were marked by various ele-
ments that could indicate the social class of their family, but one impor-
tant space that stood out was schools.
Educational settings and, in particular, schools were one of the spaces
where classed identities were actively constructed in these narratives. An
educational setting can, in itself, be a marker of class, but in a country
where education seems necessary for women to gain equal (or nearly
equal) rights to men, the ‘type’ of education and the space in which it
was provided are important markers of class. In this sense, some schools
had different meanings for children and their parents in terms of the
opportunities they might have provided for these women in their future
lives. These spaces were important as they provided not only an edu-
cation but also gave these women an ‘edge’ in their youth when com-
pared to children in other families. Farnaz, a young GP in her thirties,
described the school she attended in this sense.
Farnaz: The school we used to go was a school that taught English from
the beginning [Year One]. Erm, it was an English school. Then afterwards
both my brother and I went to the international school. And then the rev-
olution happened and… my brother left Iran for Britain, whilst I stayed
there and went to a girls-only school.
Mastoureh: Can you describe your school to me?
Farnaz: We went to an international school. The system was generally dif-

ferent. All the lessons were in English. We only studied two hours a day
in Farsi; the rest was in English. It was designed to give students an edge
[over] others.
Places such as international schools where students are brought up with

specific characteristics intended to distinguish them from other mem-
bers of society were limited to large cities. Those who attended these
schools came from secular families with ample access to social networks.
Farnaz’s ‘sense of a place’ in regard to her school and the way in which
she saw that space as an environment where students were more pre-
pared are accompanied by her reconstruction of memory, stasis and nos-
talgia (Massey 1994, p. 119). For Farnaz, such a school exemplified her
attempt at creating a classed life from an early age, when her contact was
limited to people from similar social classes in Tehran. The following
quotation from Khorshid also sums up this idea of exclusionary access
and reveals the hidden nostalgia that bounded her to certain spaces such
as the foreign-language schools for ‘gifted’ or ‘talented’ students that she
attended.
Khorshid: I went to primary school when I was five. I went to tizhooshan

[gifted child] school, then to an Italian secondary school and a German
90 M. Fathi
high school. Because my English was [good] we were always out of Iran
until I was 10 or 11. And because of that I had a good foundation [in]
English.… when we went back from England, I went to an Italian school
that accepted me because of my good English. [By the time I turned 16] I
was already at medical school.
Khorshid’s claims of familial class and pathways of growing up look more

vivid with the description of these educational spaces. Of course, such
descriptions of places are limited and such characterisations make places
into a ‘pause’, a permanence or a fixed entity at the time the person is
narrating them, as meanings are contingent on the specific audience to
which they are being narrated. In the following extract, Shirin describes
her school.
Mastoureh: This school that you talked about: was it a governmental, state
school or a school for the talented and gifted?
Shirin: No, it was private and you had to pay for it. In those days, they
were calling it melli [national]. Everything in Iran has another name. If
you are supposed to pay and it does not belong to [the public], it is called
melli [national]. (We laugh). Gheire entefaee means ‘non-profit school’, but
it is actually profitable. It is meaningless. What does it mean? So it was dur-
ing the [time of the] Shah, when everything had another meaning. So they
were calling it melli [and it] belonged to the private sector.
Mastoureh: It wasn’t a state school?
Shirin: No, it wasn’t, but it wasn’t a bad school and was very strict.
Mastoureh: Was there a different system at school?
Shirin: You can still go and see what the headmaster is like. He had studied
teaching and had his own style. He [emphasised] literature, handwriting,
writing skills and adab [manners]. We are very polite now because of that,
you know. (Both laugh)
Mastoureh: Interesting, and why did they register you there?
Shirin: Why did my mum? Maybe it was the fashion at that time to register
[children] in a well-known school. I don’t know the reason.
Some of these women migrants come to understand such spaces with

reference to the meanings attached to places, such as the concept of
adab, i.e. politeness and propriety, in the above quotation from Shirin.
Although she jokes about adab, the fact that it was used to describe the
characteristics of such a space alongside other social norms, for example
the emphasis on writing, handwriting and literature, shows how Shirin
viewed the place as an unusual space compared to other schools in exist-
ence during that time in her life. Those who inhabited these spaces with
Shirin, Khorshid and Farnaz were in fact living a similar life to them.
They belonged to middle-class families whose use of certain spaces was
facilitated by virtue of their access to certain social capital.
4.4 Neighbourhoods
Neighbourhoods are important in the formation of classed identities.
They are the spaces where local, mundane and everyday descriptions of
home are shaped. These ‘local’ understandings of places such as middle-
class neighbourhoods, where the individuals feel they ‘fit in’ with the res-
idents, were important in these women’s classed narratives. Sometimes, I
was personally involved in the acceptance and recognition of the validity
of this space. I was invited to Nina’s house one Saturday to sit down for
the interview. The property was about a 15-minute walk from the sta-
tion and during this time I reviewed in my head the schedule for the day
and the questions I was going to ask, so it came as a surprise when, upon
meeting her (for the first time in my life), she asked me about my walk
and the neighbourhood. I said, ‘It was nice, residential’ (the answer I
thought I should give). It was a typical suburban neighbourhood with
lots of gardens and wide pavements and was virtually litter- and pedes-
trian-free. That was all I could remember from my walk, so I mumbled
some of this information to her, which apparently pleased her.
Nina: Yes, it is quite English, isn’t it? I just bought this flat two months
ago and you are the first person [to visit]. I wanted to know how the
neighbourhood looks to a visitor.
Her initial reaction and desire to know what I was thinking indicated to
me that one’s neighbourhood was an important signifier of one’s class.
This is not a new subject and it has been most notably discussed in the
works of Savage (2008), Watt (2009), Watt and Smets (2014); however,
for migrants to claim a degree of Englishness within neighbourhoods
was fascinating.
92 M. Fathi
British middle-classness intersects, to a great degree, with the idea of

integration, assimilation and belonging to a space. For Nina, the neigh-
bourhood in which she had recently purchased a flat was an important
element in making a claim to belonging, integration and becoming
English. The fact that, for her, the neighbourhood was associated with
an Englisi life could ease her attempts at inclusion. Such an attempt from
a migrant woman like Nina is not specific to those who are counted as
non-indigenous. In Britain, suburbs have been represented as loca-
tions for the middle-class ‘good life’ (Watt 2009, p. 2874) in a similar
way to American suburbs, which are counted as a bourgeois utopia in
which people can feel they have bettered themselves and believe that ‘the
move outward is also a move upwards’ (Willmott and Young 1967, p.
15). Some have called the middle classes who live in suburbs ‘the gated
communities’ (Low 2004), demonstrating the increasing socio-spatial
segregation of communities in the suburbs. According to Watt (2009),
various forms of exclusionary closure are enacted by the middle classes
that involve spatial decoupling from other social classes, prominently in
relation to the neighbourhood in which they live and the schools their
children attend. As we could see in the previous section on schools, simi-
lar techniques were used by the families of these women in choosing
educational spaces that excluded children in order to better them or give
them an edge.
The ways in which these women referred to other groups and the
locales they were living in are indicative of the ‘middle class disaffilia-
tion’ that Atkinson (2006) defines as the distance the middle class puts
between itself and the dirty, dangerous cities with their working-class
populations. Referring to these choices of place in a spatialised reworking
of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework of field and habitus, Savage et al.
(2005), in Globalization and Belonging, discuss the concept of ‘elective
belonging’; that is, an orientation of the middle classes towards a place
where people ‘like themselves’ live. Savage (2008, p. 152) argues that:
the actual lived history of the place in which they lived was less important
than the way in which they could define the place as belonging to them
through their conscious choice to move and settle in it (Savage 2008, p.
152).
Criticising this idea, Watt proposes the idea of ‘selective belong-

ing’ (2009). Watt argues that people’s spatial differentiations in their
understandings of locations after they have settled down in a particu-

lar neighbourhood refers to a spatially uneven sense of belonging and
attachment rooted in the relationships between people who reside in
working-class and middle-class areas.
Most of my interviews with these Iranian migrants took place in the
women’s own houses. These houses were all located in suburban mid-
dle-class areas. Although neighbourhood, housing and other location-
based questions were not discussed specifically in the interviews, the
women’s affective responses implied a knowledge of taste and recogni-
tion that reinforced these women’s understandings of their belonging or
lack of belonging to Britain. This sense of belonging is related to their
acquisition of such local knowledge around spaces, locations and places
in Britain. In this extract, Maryam, an ex-professor in Iran and a sen-
ior consultant in Britain, discusses how she realised that she was living a
middle-class life during a conversation with an English doctor.
Maryam: […] last Saturday, I had a guest, a leading doctor from the Royal
College of Surgeons. We had met in Tehran years ago and he had seen my
house there. I told him that I felt that I had [become worse off] finan-
cially and that my position was very vulnerable [in Britain] but that I was
very happy to live here and was very comfortable, especially in light of the
growing turmoil in Iran now. Then he said, ‘Forget about Iran’s system;
for you, in England, living in such a house (she points around her with her
finger) is not… a low-class [life]’. A consultant here is not very low posi-
tion. It is middle class. He said it is middle class, not low. I don’t know.
If you ask me about it [living conditions], to me it is terrible. But, appar-
ently, we are middle class [by] English standards.
Discussions around spatial aspects of class are mostly racialised in interna-

tional migrants’ stories. They are racialised in the sense that these spaces,
whilst located in a post-migration era, attain specific meanings through
the juxtaposition of various racial groupings; for example, in the previ-
ous quotation by Nina, her reference to her area as ‘English’ implied that
it was not only a predominantly white area but also a middle-class area.
In such a characterisation, the adjective ‘English’ does not apply to the
white working-class areas that Le Grand (2010) depicts in his ethnogra-
phy of a white working-class town.
94 M. Fathi
In this book, the adjective ‘English’ is used to refer to all those char-
acteristics of a middle-class, utopian lifestyle that are advertised usually
through mainstream media as the ‘correct’ lifestyle.
In the above quotation, Maryam expresses her anxiety about not
occupying the same class location as she did in Iran. Being a professor
and having a private surgery in Tehran put her in a position that made
it difficult for her to think of herself as a middle-class person. Indeed,
a middle-class person in Iran is someone who lives a comfortable life
but does not have savings and is unable to afford a luxury lifestyle.
Maryam had a luxurious lifestyle. She was married to a famous surgeon
who earned much more than she did. As such, for her, the suburban
area in which she was living was not a betterment, contrary to Watt’s
(2009) argument; it was a downgrade compared to what she had in Iran.
Because she narrates her story from the lens of an English consultant,
to a long-standing colleague who knew her within her social milieu in
Tehran, the story is given validation. Maryam notes that the position she
has in England is counted as middle-class mainly because she lives in a
detached house in an affluent area, although not as affluent as she had
hoped for. These classed descriptions of her house and neighbourhood
are important, but what is even more important is the intersectionality
of such a concept hidden in this quotation. That is the role race plays in
making claims of integration and Englishness legitimate and authentic,
i.e. it was a (white) English doctor who assured Maryam that she lived a
middle-class lifestyle and not, for example, an Asian or black person.
4.5 Spatial Class: A Conclusion

These Iranian migrants shape their choice of places within national and
transnational networks that sometimes characterise them as middle-class
residents and sometimes as part of a wider diaspora; however, in both of
these positionings, they are part of a certain class group that intersects
with white English people and partly with Iranian diaspora. The global
perspective, for instance the differentiation made between countries
and local places such as schools and neighbourhoods, are imbued with
race, class, gender and a sense of belonging and inclusiveness etc. These
spaces are intersectional and they make sense to these women in this way,
demonstrated by the fact that they used places actively in their charac-
terisation of their classed identities. The places where these women lived
their lives, either as children, adults, migrants or women, are crucial in
their identity formation and positioning. Iranian migrants see migratory

movements to Western societies as a form of continuation of classed tra-
jectories, a process that could be initiated by attending international and
foreign language schools. Such exclusionary pathways become character-
istic of middle-class families and are viewed as an essential ‘investment’
in children, such that they may gain access to particular spaces which,
it is believed, will change them; hence, parents attempt to register their
child(ren) at a particular school or make a conscious decision to buy a
house in a specific location. These migrant women show a ‘hierarchical’
and a colonial understanding of classed places such as countries, neigh-
bourhoods and schools, a process that was heavily racialised in post-
migration stories. Britain was represented as a utopian society in which
morality permeates social locality and Iran as a place associated with dis-
tressing memories of the past, of a left behind history. Migrants, through
their networks and situated positionings, acquire a local knowledge of
what class (or any other social location) means in a specific context. The
meanings ascribed to places are shaped by the defined taste of those who
are seen as legitimate and fully fledged members of British society, i.e.
the British white middle classes. These choices also affect one’s choice of
neighbourhood, school, house or diasporic place. These Iranian migrants
make claims about who they are through categorising people and spaces
and distancing themselves from identifications that engage them with the
‘other’, a discussion that is developed further in the following chapters.
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CHAPTER 5
Classed Performing
My interest in the performative aspects of class came from realising

how migrants in general employ different intersectional techniques and
knowledges to convey meanings around being English, Iranian, mid-
dle-class, etc. Some have argued that performances are important in
presenting migrants’ sense of belonging to certain ethnic groups (Bell
1999; Fortier 1999); thus, in this chapter, I use Judith Butler’s theory of
performance, acts and performativity to explain how the women in this
book construct their classed identities through performances, although I
emphasise how these performances, like other aspects of their identities,
are intersectional and are formed translocally.
In explaining acts and meanings, Butler (1999) argues that subjects
are constructed through the reiteration of acts in pre-existing discourses.
These discourses inform and provide a space in which the acts can
become meaningful. She emphasises the importance of power relations
(Butler 1993) and rejects the reified and naturalised concepts of gender,
refuting the way in which these concepts are constituted. She argues that
gender is not just reproduced but is enacted and performed as a process
(Butler 1988). She believes that gender is not a fact but that
various acts of gender creates [sic] the idea of gender and without those
acts there would be no gender at all. Gender is thus a construction that
regularly conceals its genesis. (Butler 1988, p. 522)

98 M. Fathi
Judith Butler’s inquiry into gender identities presents challenges to

the orthodoxy, which proposes that we have a sex upon which gen-
der is drawn. She argues that sex is as public as gender and that there
is no identity that takes precedence over the social; that is, all identities
are social and are formed through the repetition of acts for audiences.
For Butler, sex and gender are materialised through bodies and are per-
formed and constructed socially (Butler 1993). Lawler argues that Butler
sees identities
not [as] expressions of some inner nature; rather, they are performative in
that they are repeatedly and constantly ‘done’ and they are performative in
that they bring into effect what they name. (Lawler 2008, p. 114)
Furthermore, they are ‘done’ within a matrix of social relations that

authorise their being ‘done’. Differentiating between performance and
performativity, Butler (1999) argues that performativity is that aspect of
discourse that has the capacity to produce what it names. She contends
that
Performativity should be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act’

but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse
produces the effects that it names. (Butler 1999, p. 236)
In other words, ‘performativity’ for Butler is not a singular ‘act’; for her
it is the reiteration of a norm or a set of norms that are acted out in the
present time. As such, performativity has the power to conceal the ori-
gin of the act and its repetition. Butler sees the subject as constructed in
and through conduct. She considers that the act is not static and should
be seen as temporal and therefore changing over time. Moreover, she
argues that gender is not a simple matter of choice. Thus, Butler sees the
power of discourse as being that which is able continually to create and
name what it produces and to constrain meanings within its own lim-
its (Butler 1993, pp. 2–3). Butler’s theory of performativity is less con-
cerned with the importance of internalised knowledges (habitus) and the
role of the subject in acquiring these knowledges within social fields, so
perhaps thinking about Butler alone would not justify my analysis that
follows this discussion. However, I have used her methodology of analys-
ing at performances in diaspora within an intersectional framework and
by taking into account the translocationality of performances in terms of
5 CLASSED PERFORMING 99
meaning and recognition. Certain aspects of Butler’s analysis are impor-

tant in my understanding of performance in diaspora. For example, for
Butler, subjects are produced in and through power relations within dis-
courses. Butler’s theorisation of actors and the genesis of acts inclines to
the view that the discourse pre-exists the actor. In this way, one enters
into the discourse without any preconceptions of what it is like to take
on the act and only through practising it does one understand the mean-
ing of the act. In my approach, I am more inclined to bestow agency
to the person who utilises performances—here, the migrant—as I think
that individuals decide which performances to choose in order to con-
vey a certain identity or a meaning; however these performances need
to be analysed in relation to several categories in order to be meaningful
in a post-migratory context. Benhabib (2007[1992]) criticises Butler’s
notion of agency. She argues that the thesis on the ‘Death of the Subject’
is not compatible with the goals of feminism. She avers:
Surely, a subjectivity that would not be structured by language, by nar-

rative and by the symbolic codes of narrative available in a culture is
unthinkable. We tell of who we are, of the ‘I’ that we are, by means of
a narrative… These narratives are deeply colored and structured by the
codes of expectable and understandable biographies and identities in our
cultures. (Benhabib 2007, p. 214)
5.1 Class-Coded Acts
Meanings are constructed with the participation of an actor (or a teller),
an audience and also a third party, for instance, a reader of text or a
viewer of film (Bakhtin 1981). The construction of meaning is depend-
ent on agency. Importantly, acts are performed and interpretations are
made from a situated gaze. For example, one act can express and convey
various meanings and be interpreted differently from diverse geographi-
cal and social locations (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis 2002). I see acts as
carried out to demonstrate certain identities that the actor or performer
wants others to perceive. Class-coded acts are those that are performed
by an actor to express belonging to a grouping or lifestyle in order to
reinforce a classed identity over time. Similarly, Weber (1968), in his def-
inition of status groups, argues that these groups distinguish themselves
by applying certain performances, although he does not call them class-
coded acts.
100 M. Fathi
Like any other act in social life, class-coded acts are neither static,
intact nor innate. They are always achieved, created collectively and
moulded by the social context in which people are situated and make
sense of them. The performance of acts and the construction of mean-
ings attributed to them is dependent on the existence of an audience that
takes an active role in the process.
Class is not an entity, it is an understanding. To understand class as
performative we need to see it within a system of social interactions that
recognises class and substantiates it within those interactions. Bourdieu
discusses circuits of symbolic recognition (Bourdieu 1984). His approach
assumes, according to Skeggs (2004, p. 3), that class is not static and
given but is in ‘continual production’. My focus is on showing how
access to symbolic recognition is constructed through class-coded prac-
tices and how these practices make class ‘a resource’ in itself in the crea-
tion of the middle-class subject.
As I examined earlier, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus discusses how the
self is classified through verbal and bodily language. It becomes a mani-
festation of who one is (Hacking 2004). The migrants whose narratives
are presented in this book utilise practices as tools to construct a classed
life in British society and, by performing in similar ways, they attribute a
sense of collectivity to who they are as a group, thereby excluding others.
This happens through learning which practices have more symbolic value
in an intersectional exchange system (Skeggs 2004) in Britain, in Iran or
in the diaspora space (Brah 1996). These value systems are reconstructed
constantly by those who are located in hegemonies. These symbolic val-
ues are usually accompanied by racialised, gendered attitudes, formed and
understood in specific locations and places.
Class-coded acts are vehicles for inclusion, exclusion, exploitation and
inferiorisation (see Rogaley and Taylor 2009). Bourdieu argues similarly
about the way that class groups judge the taste of other class groups
on the basis of such class-coded acts (Bourdieu 1984). Classed identity
should be seen as an inherently important and simultaneously reproduc-
tive process continually intersected with other social locations such as
race, gender and age. These together constantly produce new meanings
of becoming, emphasising the fluidity of these positionalities as Anthias
(2011) argues. We choose (from limited options availabe to us because
of our situated positions) what to say and how to act. Our choices
are understood by others in a situated and intersectional way as well
(Yuval-Davis 2015).
5.1.1 Class and Performance: A Delicate Relationship

Performance is part and parcel of the construction of any social identity.
Acts and performances are often intentional and purposeful. In previous
chapters I demonstrated how women doctors perform different acts in
order to construct a classed identity in their pathways of growing, but I
did not go into details of how certain acts have classed meanings. This
chapter shows how these performative acts of class are intersectional
and are constructed within national and racial frameworks in Iran and
Britain. Context influences how class is produced and performed. This
creates a complex situation for diasporic people around how they convey
class-coded performances. Class-coded acts are based upon prevalent dis-
courses and are affected by the translocation of people. In other words,
the meanings of class-coded acts change through and within migration
processes (although this does not mean that in the case of non-migrants
they stay static). Class-coded acts are, therefore, formed in our local
knowledges because they are understood differently in different contexts
but also they are performed from a specific subject positioning.
In this chapter, two main issues are raised. In the first section, using
examples of women’s narratives, I explain how my interviewees’ profes-
sional performances are related to identity formation and how morality
and materiality are constituents of these professional performances. In
the second part of the chapter, I draw on the difference between the for-
mation of performances in Iran and the UK. I argue that understanding
national and racial discourses changes our local knowledge of classifi-
cation and that this is an important aspect of the study of class perfor-
mances. Local knowledges not only help with the production of classed
identities but also transform them continually. Performative acts are not
only produced but are also named in these discourses. I argue that ‘class
performativity’ is a requisite part of inclusionary and exclusionary sys-
tems of classification that are local and situated.
5.1.2 Performing Class-Coded Acts

Class-coded acts are those that perform belonging to a grouping or a
lifestyle in order to reinforce a classed identity over time. These acts are
formed in a situated fashion and are performed and made sense of in a
locality. They are part of our situated local knowledge of classification.
Discourses are important in bestowing meanings to acts. Discourses
102 M. Fathi
themselves are created by the repetition and reiteration of acts within

certain boundaries. In other words, meanings are not formed in a vac-
uum; they are formed within a context (Butler 1993). Although the rep-
etition and reiteration of acts should put limits on the meanings of such
acts, a subject, knowingly or unknowingly, makes decisions relating to
her situated understanding of acts within a specific discourse (Benhabib
2007). Whether or not individuals are conscious of hegemonic dis-
courses, they have a local knowledge of the hegemonic and non-hegem-
onic discourses available to them; thus, we understand meanings through
these discourses and we actively reiterate, add, reduce and change the
meanings of these acts. This is how I read these narratives in terms of
classed performances. As such, migrants who enter a new society will,
through their social connections, learn performances from their situated
positioning (like anyone else) and their presence, including their under-
standings and performances, will equally affect the society in which they
live.
In terms of class and status, Weber (1968) differentiates between
status groups and classes by referring to the former as communities
that have a particular lifestyle and the latter as economically differenti-
ated groups. I refer to these status lifestyles as class-coded performances.
Being ‘a middle-class woman’ entails ‘living a middle-class life’ by using
certain performances to mark said classed lifestyle. These lifestyles are
gendered. According to Butler, gender is reproduced through the rep-
etition of gendered acts (Butler 1993). These women also create classed
identities by reiterating class-coded acts. ‘Doctor’ is constructed as a
middle-class category for these women firstly by their formal gradua-
tion as a doctor and secondly by a process of symbolic attributions to a
community, a grouping, a professional body, an institution and a class,
although these classed and gendered aspects are racialised, I am going to
focus on the formation of gendered and classed performances. Although
difficult to separate these categories, racialisation is discussed in more
detail in the next chapter.
In the extract below, Solmaz explains how she used her power as a
doctor not to conform with traditional expectations of women in Iran.
She uses class-coded acts to differentiate between herself (a profes-
sional woman) and other women whose performances are perhaps more
gendered.
Solmaz: In Iran, I had servants. It was not like here. In Iran, I was not
doing housework. Nothing at all. In Iran, I was not cleaning the house.
I had a cleaner. I had a cook who was doing the cooking. There was a
babysitter. And [I was] only working [as a doctor]. And when [I] came
back [home] everything was done. But here, there is no servant. Although,
my husband does more housework because he works [as a doctor] less
than me. But, for example, in the last year I haven’t spent time with my
daughter. I have done nothing about her education because my job was
very demanding. But I have to do more this year. You know, our [rule is
that] whoever is at home cooks the food. And because my daughter is at
home all the time, she does it.
Solmaz emphasises that her job has been more important than her
domestic role. She has not even performed the roles expected of a
mother in Iranian culture—doing the housework. The first part of her
narrative is a gendered statement about her class. As a woman doctor
in Iran, she could fulfil her role of being a mother and a professional
woman because she could afford domestic help; however, this is not the
case in the UK either in terms of classed performance or gendered roles.
She feels guilty for not fulfilling the required surveillance, a motherly
duty that was discussed in Chap. 3 in relation to a daughter’s education.
Instead of being a woman who complies with gendered duties, she is one
who defies gendered acts because she identifies herself more with being a
doctor than a household woman and by doing this she forms her classed
acts through rejecting the gendered norms around being a woman.
Although these two roles become contradictory for her and although
Solmaz understands her identity in terms of her profession, she argues
that she had to work on her husband to change those traditional views.
Solmaz: I work more [hours] than my husband and because of this he does
more housework. I haven’t cleaned the house for almost a year.
Mastoureh: It is excellent that his views are not traditional.
Solmaz: [Laughs] No, it was me that changed his views.
Patriarchal norms as masculine performances are not specific to Iran.

Historically, housework has typically been a woman’s role and is still so
in Iran, even for women who work outside the house. What is important
here, however, is that gendered performances are defined differently in
104 M. Fathi
the two contexts of Iran and the UK. In the following extract, Maryam
describes gendered duties in a celebratory manner.
Mastoureh: Can you tell me about your life at home as a mother and a
wife?
Maryam: It is much better here because in Iran I did not even have the
time to tell my servants or butler to clean the house for me. When I
arrived home, it was 11 or 12 pm and there was nobody at home. Here, I
wake up like a real lady, I vacuum the house and clean. This is something
that I missed my whole life. Don’t laugh at me, thinking that she is crazy.
One cannot miss vacuuming. But in this way, I feel that I belong. In my
house in Iran, I never had the opportunity to vacuum, clean the floor, do
the dusting, especially during the last eight years in Iran. In a way, I am
enjoying and celebrating housekeeping.
By differentiating between performance as ‘duty’ and performance as

‘celebration of housework’, Maryam argues how housework can turn
into a classed act. Her narratives of her life in Iran and the UK contradict
one another. Her power, her engagement with her work and her abil-
ity to afford to hire domestic help are important in understanding her
second account as a classed performance rather than a gendered perfor-
mance. Maryam mentions all her classed privileges at the beginning to
help the audience understand why she is ‘celebrating’ the housework:
it gives her a sense of belonging. She says that she misses doing house-
work and glorifies being able to do it in Britain in order to emphasise her
classed life in Iran. She is celebrating the gendered acts which contribute
to her new identity in Britain.
As is clear from the two examples above, being a doctor can involve
the rejection and the celebration of gendered duties, although both nar-
ratives connote a classed background. Both women argue that in Iran
other people were in charge of the housework. While Solmaz still pre-
fers not to do housework, Maryam finds dignity in doing it herself. It
is a fact that domestic labour in Britain is much more expensive than in
Iran. The employment of maids, butlers and drivers is a characteristic
of these classed narratives. A lack of engagement with household duties
is taken as an important indicator of classed identity, especially in Iran.
Later, the emphasis on the ‘importance’ of their household duties in the
UK as mothers or wives shows how the two sets of gendered and classed
narratives complement each other in creating class-coded acts for mid-

dle-class migrant mothers.
5.2 Feminine Doctors: Femininity and Educational

Capital
It is argued that narratives of lack and decline are a major part of the
construction of working-class identities (Lawler 1999a, b, 2005).
Drawing on the issues of purity and respectability, Lawler argues that
these are the exact opposite of narratives of culture and understanding
(Lawler 2005). She argues that aesthetic values are translated into moral
ones, so that those who lack taste are considered to be morally lacking.
That is why, according to her, working-class people are often judged by
their appearance.
Class differences are often understood as sexual differences, with the
working class cast as the bearer of an exaggerated sexuality against which
middle-class respectability is defined (Skeggs 1997). Among women,
clothing and make-up are seen as markers of different ‘sexual morals’
between classes (Ortner 1991). In the studies that underpin the argu-
ments in this book, sexuality was to a great degree opposed to a classed
identity. Although the groups I interviewed consisted of married and sin-
gle women, discussions of sexuality were particularly scarce amongst the
married women. References to classed performances that could be read
as ‘sexual’ were seldom mentioned. In the following narrative, Nina, a
single doctor in her early 40s who used to be a lab technician, argues
how sexuality was used as a form of cultural capital by a female doctor
she saw in Iran.
Nina: I remember [that] I once took my dad to a heart hospital and there
was a female doctor there. She might have been a heart specialist and was
maybe around 33 or 34 years old at that time. She was very pretty and was
wearing her mobile phone around her neck and high-heeled shoes. Her
first name was Tannaz, I can’t remember her surname. And when I saw
her, I said to myself wow; it was after the Revolution and she was wearing
a scarf, not very tightly fastened [she demonstrates this with a movement
of her head and hands], and she was wearing make-up, very sexy, very fem-
inine, but she was a heart specialist. I said to myself: ‘Look, nobody can
touch her’. Do you know what I am saying? It was confidence I wanted.1
106 M. Fathi
Nina talks about the processes through which a medical self is repre-
sented as a complete, powerful, envied as well as feminine. Femininity
combined with being a specialist is a powerful tool that Nina sees as cre-
ating a strong image of a woman. Her eloquence in describing Tannaz’s
feminine appearance may stem from the fact that Nina was not a doctor
herself when she saw Tannaz in the hospital. In telling the above story,
Nina realises that it was not Tannaz’s femininity that she wanted but her
confidence. This confidence could be translated into belonging to a cer-
tain class group. Tannaz’s confidence could also stem from the power
vested in her through her being a surgeon as well as a pretty woman
(in Nina’s words). Tannaz’s habitus and her class-coded feminine per-
formances created this desire in Nina, resulting in her telling a narrative
that indicates a ‘lack’ in her life. The fact that Tannaz was not complying
with Islamic dress code in her workplace shows the degree of autonomy
a doctor can have in Iran, something that Nina aspired to: the power
that can get one through the imposed boundaries of an Islamic society
and the freedom to choose what to wear in the workplace. For Nina,
Tannaz’s image characterises a woman ‘who has it all’ (Genz 2010). As
Genz (2010) argues, women in this postmodern era are expected to be
both educated and independent ‘feminists’ as well as ‘feminine’.
Tannaz’s feminine performance and her state of being a surgeon, as
narrated through Nina’s words, is a form of cultural capital that expands
her circle of power and allows her to cross boundaries. Such complex
and intersectional performances affect others’ understandings; however,
as a form of capital in this context, femininity cannot be converted into
symbolic capital unless it is reinforced by other forms of capital such as
economic and social capital. Skeggs (1997, p. 10) argues that
analysing the access and legitimation of cultural formations enables us to

see how cultural capital is or is not converted into symbolic capital and,
hence, how inequalities are generated and systematic disempowerment is
engendered. (Skeggs 1997, p. 10)
Roya, another single woman, makes her sexuality explicit in a similar way
by combining it with her status. She talks about her femininity as a form
of cultural capital but, in this narrative, it is intersected with her social
status as a well-known doctor. In the following extract, she talks about
working as a dentist in a small town in a Scandinavian country in which
she used to study, where most people had blond hair and blue eyes.
Roya: Having dark hair and eyes had its own positive points. Because of
the type of job I had at that time in that town, because I was the dentist of
that town, erm, I was a part of the upper classes. And many patients were
booking appointments without any specific reason [laughs] only because
they wanted to see what a brown-eyed person looked like. And the mayor
of the town gave a party to, in his own words, ‘show off the girl from the
One Thousand and One Night Stories’ [the Arabian Nights].
These narratives show two simultaneous processes: the first is the conver-
sion of femininity into cultural capital; the second is the recognition of
that femininity as cultural capital. Both processes depend on who tells
the story, to which audience and for what purpose and whether or not
the narrative is recognised by others. Skeggs (2001, p. 295) argues that
misrecognition of femininity happens through ‘historical classed posi-
tions that are premised on appearance being read as a value of the per-
sonhood’. In these narratives, the importance of appearance through
others’ judgements is highlighted. For example, Roxana, a mother of
two, has a totally different idea about how she should look as a doctor.
Roxana: Clothing is very important. For example, in the hospital, I try to

wear neat and comfortable clothes to be able to do my work. You need
to wear the clothes as if going to an interview, you need to wear serious
clothes. Tops which are revealing and short skirts are not acceptable. Not
at all. You have to be modest and gentle.
Mastoureh: Are brands important?
Roxana: No, brands are not important. And quite the opposite, in Britain.
For example, if they see that you are wearing lots of jewellery and make-
up, people dislike it.
Roxana’s understanding of how she should appear in front of others is

an important aspect of how she sees her classed identity. Her account
of her feminine looks is superseded by her educational capital, but to
her that is part of the construction of her classed identity as a doctor.
Her understanding of recognition and misrecognition is informed by
her local knowledge from British and Iranian contexts. As is obvious
from Roxana’s narrative, dressing sexily was discussed less amongst mar-
ried women. While Khorshid, Monir and Solmaz went into detail about
which clothes they bought, the narratives of married doctors were gen-
der-related more in terms of domestic duties than in terms of femininity.
108 M. Fathi
In the next section, I will discuss the issue of ownership of professional

performances.
5.2.1 ‘Owning’ the Doctor’s Role: Being Authentic

Goffman’s (1982) concept of role-playing is relevant here. He argues
that people are not their ‘sacred’ selves (untainted by the social) when
they are in the presence of others; instead they are ‘profane’ (less true
and tainted by the presence of their audience). ‘Owning roles’ refers to
the performances that these migrant women make sense of and how they
narrate them in relation to who they are: the owning of a role involves
the ordinary and mundane everyday practices that are significant to
women and are narrated for a third audience. Examples include using
certain products, going on holidays or bringing up their children in a
particular way. In fact, owning a role such as that of a doctor or a suc-
cessful woman involves playing the role in a way that is both expected
of them by others and that they feel they are able to play. This ability
comes from education as well as from the femininity that was discussed
in the previous section. These roles require not only learning and acqui-
sition, as Goffman argues, but they also create distinctions between the
members and non-members of particular social groups. In the following
extract, Roxana discusses the time that she had just become a young doc-
tor and did not know how to behave and how this created an ambiguous
positioning and a lack of recognition of her being an authentic doctor.
Mastoureh: Do you think that it is the income or intelligence that gives

doctors this feeling [of being different]?
Roxana: I don’t know. Because I don’t think like that myself and I think
that … No, I cannot explain it because I don’t have that feeling about
myself. And that is why when I finished my studies I was acting normally. I
was a normal person in my view. But some people, only after talking to my
mother, realised that I was a doctor. They were saying to my mother, ‘It
isn’t [obvious] that she is a doctor because she is very down-to-earth and
not self-centred.’
The ownership of a role is understood within discourses that define what

is hegemonic and what is marginal, which performances are normal and
which are not. The performances that distinguish doctors from non-
doctors in terms of how they behave are understood within the power
relations that define specific performances as being necessary for convey-

ing a person’s identity. Roxana’s example is important because it exem-
plifies the link between the input of others and her understanding of her
role: the two are dissonant. This situation is related to Butler’s view that
we improvise within scenes of constraints (Butler 2004). We constantly
make justifications about ‘why’ we act in such a way. This constant rene-
gotiation of an act and its relationship to identity shows that one’s own-
ership of a role is something that is constructed and passed to us through
a discourse. As Roxana says, she was acting ‘normally’ and, to her, she
owned her performance, whereas other people did not see it that way.
Roxana: I was wondering what I should do in order to show that I am

a doctor. I was acting normally. But from their point of view I was act-
ing abnormally because I should have been behaving in a way that clearly
showed I was a doctor, while I think that I should do whatever is necessary
for me to do. I don’t care whether other people like it or not. People want
to see a doctor as a snob or a person who has overt self-confidence. [But]
it is not even confidence: it is performing as a snob. This is something that
people like you to be.
In these extracts, however, Roxana also means that despite the role peo-
ple play to make others believe that they own that role, an individual has
the capacity to think about and decide on the type of acts she is per-
forming, regardless of whether or not such acts are recognised by the
hegemonic majority. Although discussed before, the matter of recogni-
tion and misrecognition is different here because, from the perspective
of an actor, authentic classed performances are understood within a dis-
course (Iranian society or the party to which Roxana refers) and from the
situated positioning of the actor herself (Roxana deciding what is normal
behaviour for her).
By considering the previous extract by Nina and her description of
Tannaz, this ownership of roles can become clearer. The roles these two
women play are contradictory although, at the same time, both refer to
the importance of owning a role and its significance in making claims
of classed identity. Tannaz (the heart surgeon) has a role that is more
‘owned’ by her and taken on as part of her ‘person’, whereas Nina
a non-doctor—plays a more ‘resented’ role, to use Goffman’s terms
(Hacking 2004), because she expresses herself via narratives of desire and
envy (Lawler 2005). Ownership of one’s role and the power gained by
110 M. Fathi
obtaining something through playing a role are the two issues to which
Nina refers in the above story. Nina wants to be like Tannaz, to ‘own’
a mask, which is no more superficial because the mask has become part
of the self through the authentication of Tannaz’s classed position as a
surgeon.
Nina describes how insecure she still feels; she is a doctor now, but
because she came into medicine late she does not have the same confi-
dence as others to perform as is expected for a doctor. This is because
Tannaz owns knowledge, power and money as well as femininity and
beauty. Tannaz’s success laid in her ability to take, play and embody each
of the roles simultaneously, an ability that Nina did not possess (at least
when she was the same age as Tannaz).
Nina does not refer to class directly; in fact, many of these women do
not. For Nina, middle-classness embodies all of the things that Tannaz
had. Tannaz’s image is more vivid for Nina mainly due to two things:
firstly, the scene is set in an Islamic country and creates a juxtaposition
between two different pieces of imagery, one that reinforces the idea
of owning a lifestyle and another that involves a failure to fit in with
the obligatory rules; secondly, a non-doctor (at the time) is describing
the image of a doctor, which again relates to the ownership of a social
role and how people expect doctors to behave. Nina talks about how
she attempts to raise her social class by becoming a doctor because she
understands that through qualifying as a doctor she can own the person-
ality that she saw in Tannaz. Although she believes that she comes from
a middle-class family, becoming a doctor is seen as a way to mobilise her
class and give her the confidence to build the social capital she seeks.
5.2.2 Classed Performance and Morality

Performance is related to visibility and visuality. As Anthias (2005)
argues, class cannot be separated from materiality. The ‘visuality of class’
is a form of its material representation. The performance of class-coded
acts, which in an exchange value system are valuable, is closely related
to the understanding of the self as materialistic. Class is constructed on
materialistic as well as on moral grounds. For Nina, class is encapsulated
in a materialistic understanding of consumption.
Nina: […] for leisure, I go to parties, Iranian parties. I go out eating in

Iranian restaurants, hmm… it’s good. For shopping, hmm, for food
shopping, I buy things from Iranian shops or, erm… from Tesco or Asda.
I don’t shop from Marks & Spencer. I don’t like their products. I think
they are too English and salty… and oily. I often cook. I buy the meat
from the butchers and from Turkish places, those shops which have fruit
outside, they are similar to our grocery stores in Iran. They are both cheap
and things are good.… For clothing, I go to T. K. Maxx and buy designer
clothes at cheaper prices. If you want to think about it, I spend up to £100
on shoes [and up to] £30 or £40 on a top. I have a fur coat. I have a
Delsey suitcase. Erm… yes, I have a BMW. I bought a flat. I have [Persian]
carpets. I don’t know the social level of these things, but I have them.
Nina lists the things she uses in her daily life but also those that she
thinks connote her class. Although she wants to show that the price of
the product does not factor into her decision to buy it (she mentions
the brands first), she clearly narrates within a materialistic context. Nina
refers to the price of products as well as justifying her decision in a non-
materialistic way; her choices are always justified using a non-material-
istic reason, one that is far from the aesthetics of class formation. For
example, Marks & Spencer products are ‘English, oily and salty’ or the
Turkish butcher ‘resembles [an] Iranian-style shop’. She wants to assert
the idea that it is not because of the materialistic value of the goods that
she does or does not use them but, more importantly, because she genu-
inely finds them unsuitable for her lifestyle.
The construction of material class in the above narrative goes beyond
a simple description of habits of consumption. What Nina is referring to
is the acquisition of doing and performing the ‘right’ thing in a certain
context. She wants to demonstrate that she is aware of both the ‘right
taste’ in the hegemonic British culture and the symbolic value of certain
brands. She may or may not have the hegemonic taste in her consump-
tion habits, but whilst she narrates her choices she talks about them in
detail. In fact, by naming brands, Nina touches on an important aspect
of middle-class life; that is, ‘visibility’. She feels that by consuming cer-
tain products she will be more visible as a middle-class subject rather
than as a migrant. Hage (1998) provides an analysis of what it means
to be Australian. Much the same as Bourdieu in his discussion on taste
(1984), Hage explores how different groups of people acquire the ‘right’
type of things and cultural capital in order to be seen as ‘worthy’ and
not to be seen as a ‘threat’ to security in the Australian context. Such
an approach can be applied to consumption habits. In Nina’s example
112 M. Fathi
above, the description of her consumption habits demonstrates signifi-

cantly how the ‘worthy’ subject shapes her story and how in the pro-
cess of understanding oneself to be worthy there is a need for ‘moral’
grounds (Hage 1998) to use non-consumerist reasons for one’s choice
of certain products. Similarly, Khorshid, Monir, Farnaz, Giti and Batool
all discuss how they think in relation to what they should buy and con-
sume and who they are as professionals.
Khorshid: I shop from certain places. For example, if I want to buy some-
thing for the house, I buy it from Laura Ashley. If I want to buy some
clothes, I buy them from Laura Ashley. If I want to shop, there are some
places that I particularly like. For example, I buy from Karen Millen [and]
from Laura Ashley, Coast and Zara. That’s all. I buy things from these
places, sometimes one or two from T. K. Maxx when I really like some-
thing, very rarely, not very much.
Mastoureh: How often do you go shopping?
Khorshid: Weekly, definitely. I have to do it weekly because my job is very

formal [and] is very much about presentation. My appearance should be
very tidy.
These narratives are characteristic of the importance of performances

that convey a classed identity. The extract below shows that despite her
worries about the future of her job, Nina also cares about how aspects
of her identity are co-constructed with the products and the brands she
uses. Continuing her narrative, she talks about her anxieties as a lonely
person and her need to save money for a rainy day.
Nina: I don’t spend much, I save more. Because I don’t know how long
I am going to stay here… sometimes I think I might go back to Iran.
Sometimes I think that at any second I might not be able to work any-
more. If I fall [ill] for example. Maybe because I am working as a locum I
don’t have security in a way. As a result, I prefer not to spend lavishly.
Spending money on designer and costly products for Nina represents a

self that she feels she needs to perform as a doctor, although she sees
herself as being in dire need of money. Nina identifies herself with the
brands she names and thinks are important in her narratives of class. This
issue of how brands are used is discussed in Franklin et al. (2000, cited
in Skeggs 2005a, p. 48). They identify branding as a process through
which an object constructs the subject. This justification of product use

becomes the property of the brand. Nina goes on to say that she needs
to save money for later, although she clearly remains conscious of how
she should represent herself as a doctor even within financial constraints.
However, the self which Nina wants to represent here in the two extracts
is not contradictory. In the second example, where she believes there is
a need for her to spend less, she resents a middle-class self because of
the consumerist description she has already given. Nina’s narrative
about using commodities is not reflective of a material aspect of her-
self. Instead, the utilising of commodities and the narrating of them in
such a way as to make sense of them in relation to class grants the per-
son respectability. This is how performativity is related to materiality and
respectability. Every person tries to repeat acts, either in the form of nar-
rative or of action, and through time they become a part of their self.
In these interviews, the women talk about how consumerist discus-
sions are part of people’s lives in Iran and how class is seen as a part
of this culture. They usually attempt to limit the conversation about
consumption to a minimum; some, such as Roxana, try to reject such
discussions altogether, as seen in the example above. As Bettie (2000)
argues, consumerism has always been a part of class. Consumerist hab-
its and cultures are different in different geographical locations, although
these locations do not determine the value of commodities. Individuals
in diaspora investigate and learn which objects have more classed value
than others.
In the conversations I had with these women, all of whom lived in
affluent areas of Britain and made use of modern and expensive furni-
ture, they never referred to any of these commodities, apart from Nina.
It was as if addressing materiality was not compatible with their roles as
doctors and would make their identities as doctors inauthentic. Nina,
who used to work as a lab technician, showed a great degree of aware-
ness about her consumerist choices.
As discussed before, narratives of envy and lack connote a working-
class background and, similarly, narratives of consumption and mate-
riality suggest the same. Speaking about the materiality of class would
trivialise middle-class identities. By not talking about what is used,
women are normalising their taste and consumption habits. These issues
are markers of middle-class life for the women in this study.
Along with the consumerism of Western products, urbanism is also
seen as a form of class. By being an urban citizen or shahri in this sense,
114 M. Fathi
one is seen as belonging to a modern space in which certain acts of class

are initiated, reproduced and performed amongst consumption groups.
This does not mean that the middle class can only be characterised in
cities; rather, I am emphasising the importance of space in the process
of the formation of consumption behaviours. Rogaley and Taylor (2009)
argue in their research on geographies, locations and belonging that class
is seen as a translocal concept that migrates between geographical loca-
tions. As a large percentage of Iran’s population live in cities, it is use-
ful to think of class in Iran as an urban phenomenon and to examine
how such a notion migrates to Britain or, rather, how it translocates in
the lives of migrants. In this sense, it is clear that context affects people’s
decisions about their lifestyles. For example, we learn what it means to
wear a branded pair of jeans in a particular space and how these place us
in a position that opens us up to the criticism of others and how we can
connect with and feel alienated from certain practices when moving out-
side of these contexts.
A great number of performances are formed around the consumption
of products because they have certain values attached to them within
a consumerist society. Respectability is maintained, to a great degree,
through consumption performances. Respectability, as advertised within
consumerism, is not only practised but also judged and evaluated by
others (Bourdieu 1984). Sometimes, however, these judgements are
contested through the re-signification of respectability (Skeggs 1997).
Skeggs notes that in the study of class it is important to consider the
cultural practices that are used as an economic resource and how these
shape the understanding of class (Skeggs 2005b). Performances that
would instigate respectability are racialised and gendered. This intersec-
tion of class and race will be addressed in the next chapter. Class is con-
structed upon moral differentiations between the self and the other and
between us and them, which are defined on the basis of certain perfor-
mances. In fact, without attributing cultural differences to a moral basis,
one could not think of others as inherently different. This brings us to
the notion of compulsory class.
5.3 Compulsory Class
‘Performativity of class’ refers to those classed acts that become part of
the self. In this way, identity is constructed and reconstructed through
the social experiences of women and, on another level, by actively
articulating class-coded acts; thus, discourses about class, which overlap

gender constantly (as well as other social intersections), are neither nat-
ural nor inevitable. They are learned processes through which a person
identifies herself with others within her social relations. These doctors
invest in these social relations in order to locate themselves in what they
call a ‘middle-class positioning’.
Rich (1980) coined the term ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ to explain
the institutionalisation of gender and heterosexuality and how these are
explicitly seen as normal and natural in people’s lives; the performance
of gender and heterosexuality become normal within this framework.
Similarly, I demonstrate how the ‘professional woman’ as a category
is performed in these women’s narratives and defies the traditional
gendered identity assigned to Iranian women. ‘Compulsory class’ is
presented by these women in a naturalised form to refer to the institu-
tionalisation of class as a male monopoly. Gender and class discourses are
bound together in these narratives to produce ‘normal class’ or ‘normal
women’. Class is constructed within discourses that are gendered and are
usually a complication in the narratives of these women.
Following on from the argument above about consumption and the
construction of a moral self as opposed to a consumerist self through
consuming products with a purpose, it can be seen that the ‘normali-
sation’ of subjects and practices happens within similar frameworks.
Diasporic individuals tend to be counted as the ‘Other’ within hegem-
onic nationalist discourses; hence, performances that defy these stereo-
types are important because they are purposeful in forging and showing
another form of identity, mainly for the class interests of those in power.
Instead of talking about themselves (Nina is an exception), the women
discuss their difference from others. They normalise themselves as doc-
tors by performing the application of different products and dress codes.
For instance, class is displayed through furniture rather than talked about
explicitly in relation to material objects, which would trivialise their
class. This is where Goffman is right in saying that we become the roles
we take on in any situation. The image of a doctor requires one to be
a material and a moral individual. In the next section, the differences
between the discourses of Iran and the UK in the formation of performa-
tive class is discussed.
Class is represented performatively in different ways in Iran and the
UK. In Iran, middle-class life is represented more through a domestic
expression of wealth or practices. For these migrant doctors, dentists and
116 M. Fathi
academics in Britain, however, the demonstration of a particular under-

standing of being similar to the ‘English’ and ‘knowledgeable’ was key
to the construction of their middle-class selves, although the boundaries
between what was English (as in white, middle-class British) and what
was Iranian were not distinctively drawn. These adjectives were men-
tioned quite purposefully, however. For example, Razieh, a dentist in her
late forties, mentions two important points about how she practises her
class: simplicity for herself but aspiration and adventure for her children.
Razieh: I am generally a simple person and because of this my lifestyle is

also very simple. I am not into luxury. Even if I can afford it, That is not
me. Erm, I like to be comfortable, to live comfortably, but I am not the
type of person to have several kinds of car or several houses, and I am not
like that. I like my kids to be able to do the things they like, erm…
Mastoureh: What do your kids do outside of school?
Razieh: Erm, for example, one of the big experiences that my kids do
is that they go to a private school. Then, erm, they go swimming, they
go to Farsi classes, they go to YOGA, they go to ballet, things like that.
I like them to try things that they like, like their friends. I know that
they are not going to try all of them, but let’s see which one they are
going to do.
Razieh mentions that she does not like to commit herself to luxurious
consumption habits but that, for her, it is important that her children
practise what she describes as extracurricular activities, those that make
them similar to their friends. Her children’s act of trying, picking and
choosing performances is, for Razieh, a classed act.
Another important aspect of women’s class formation through per-
formances is the way in which these women construct the same profes-
sion in different ways in Iran and in Britain. It is a complicated process
that needs a great degree of understanding and local knowledge of class.
These differences are accompanied by narratives of superiority and infe-
riority because the performances lie within power relations. Since migra-
tion for these women is seen as a difficult but successful pathway, their
professional experiences in the UK are marked with a notion of success.
In each one of these categories, performance constructs and conveys
meanings. This issue of the formation of situatedness can be observed in
Nina’s narrative about the status of doctors in Iran.
Nina: In Iran, everybody pampers you; from the first day that you are in
medical school, they call you khanoom doktor [Lady Doctor] or aghaye dok-
tor [Mr Doctor]. Everyone is flattering each other. Hmm… it feels good.
But here nobody cares about these things.
Socio-historical context is important in these women’s understanding

of the differences between performing as a doctor in Iran and Britain.
In Iran, the snobbish self, as Roxana puts it, or the pampered self, as
Nina describes it, are examples of the mainstream performative images of
doctors that are created. The women take on compulsory roles as actors,
roles that need to be fulfilled in order for them to receive recognition
and be accepted as a legitimate member of that community and that
group. This recognition is, to a great extent, gendered and is based on
the roles defined for men and women in Iranian and British society; this
is a theme that runs throughout this book.
5.3.1 Imagined Images, Real Differences

In the construction of a classed performance, the role of imagination
is important. The ‘imagined image’ that is constructed loosely around
notions of dressing, behaviour, talking, walking, eating, social networks
and the like is a key component of how we determine to which social
group we belong. More importantly, it also serves the purpose of helping
one to decide to which social class one aspires to be a part of. One of the
possible ways to understand the role of imagination in constructing class
is through narrative. These women narrated the images of being pro-
fessional women in order to associate themselves with a powerful posi-
tion. Through enacting the ‘image of the doctor’ they showed that the
processes of becoming a doctor needs practice. The women’s narratives
of Britain were tainted with negative stories around migration, whereas
narratives about their profession in Iran revolved around the power they
gained in relation to their patients, their colleagues and their domestic
spheres. Their constant referrals to scientific disciplines as being more
desirable in both contexts shows how the women actively confer a pow-
erful positioning to their roles in Iran and the UK. In this sense, the two
contexts share a similar construction of doctorhood, which is formed
within power relations. All but three of the women (Roya, Razieh
and Batool) in this book had been doctors in Iran. They shared simi-
lar opinions on the social capital they had when they practised in Iran.
118 M. Fathi
In the following extract, Khorshid, a gynaecologist, compares what she

might say to Iranian patients in Iran with what she might say to British
patients in Britain, in order to indicate the difference between the two
countries.
Khorshid: … [In a harsh tone] ‘Madam! I have to take out your womb
tomorrow. Sign this consent letter and stop talking about it because it is
me who decides’.
…[to another patient] ‘You have to have a caesarean’.
‘Why?’
‘Who cares? It’s because I say so’…‘I am the God. I am the person who
decides here.’
But here [in Britain], I did not know what I had to say. [In a much softer
tone] ‘Oh, dear lady, there are several options for you; we do not have to
take out your womb. Please read the information on this website and come
back to me again if you have any questions. Are you ready? Do you have
any problems? Is there anything you want to discuss? … Go on this web-
site, come back to me and tell me what you want to do.’
Several meetings should take place with the patient to make sure that she
understands and is relaxed. I mean, it is the patient who tells me what she
wants. I am at the patient’s service, not [the other way round].
It is interesting to note, firstly, the different levels of power being exer-

cised by Khorshid in the two performances she imitates in the above
interview extract. Secondly, she draws attention to how she, as an actor,
changes her presentation of the self according to each audience. The
text, in addition to the points I mentioned above, notably hints at the
importance of performative class. The classed identity that Khorshid
portrays in each of the scenes tells us about a real difference that exists
between the two imaginary positions she portrays. There is no need to
homogenise Iranians’ professional performances. What Khorshid dem-
onstrates above is a stereotype of how a doctor might treat her patients
in Iran: being snobby, selfish and acting as the sole decision-maker.
Khorshid’s comparison of relationships between doctors and patients in
Iran and the UK shows how power relations in terms of diaspora, institu-
tions and race affect one’s understanding of morality. The migrant sta-
tus of these women puts them in a less powerful and more submissive
position because they do not feel as powerful in Britain as they do in

Iran.
Khorshid’s contrasting imagery indicates how she has acquired dif-
ferent local knowledges of both countries: she knows what roles are
expected to be performed in Iran and Britain. The examples above show
how in an Iranian locality a doctor can exercise a lot of power, and this is
expected of and acceptable for her, whilst in Britain the expectations are
different. What is significant in Khorshid’s argument, however, is her rev-
elation that she recognises the moral aspects of herself. Her British posi-
tioning is classed and moralised. She explicitly shows this through her
tone of voice and choice of words. As McClintock (1995) argues, dif-
ferences between classes are defined by the moral distance between the
working and middle classes:
The degenerate classes, defined as departures from the normal human type,
were as necessary to the self-definition of the middle-class as the idea of
degeneration was to the idea of progress, for the distance along the path of
progress travelled by some portions of humanity could be measured only by
the distance others lagged behind. (McClintock 1995, p. 46; my emphasis)
McClintock discusses how the denomination of softness and domesticity

has been central to the production of the middle classes and especially to
the production of selves in an imperialist nation (McClintock 1995). In
fact, by adopting a softer tone of voice when imitating herself in the UK,
Khorshid is acting as a middle-class self, a moral self and a human being.
By using a softer tone of voice rather than a harsher one, she differenti-
ates between the two contexts in order to relate humanity and moral-
ity to the West, where she is currently located. Both in terms of power
and morality, class for Khorshid is subject to her comparison between the
two contexts. Khorshid is following the hegemonic racial understanding
that conflates class with the idea that the West is good and the rest of
the world is lacking and lower class. Roxana, for example, discusses how
Iranian patients need different treatment compared to patients in Britain.
Roxana: In Iran, people expect doctors to use English words in their

speech. Using English words and phrases shows that the person knows a
lot. You know, here, everyone speaks English anyway. But here, as a doc-
tor you should be able to explain a disease in simple terms. If you use the
medical terms in your explanations, they will reject you in the exam. One
120 M. Fathi
of the exams you need to pass is to explain a disease to patients in layman’s

terms, while in Iran, if you do that, the patient does not regard you as a
[proper] doctor and they think that you don’t know much. They say, ‘I
know these things too. So why are you telling me?’ You have to say it in a
way that the person does not understand. Otherwise, you are not a good
doctor. [Both laugh]
Roxana’s differentiation between her professional performances in

Britain and Iran is characteristic of the same hierarchical understanding
that performances that are suited to the context of Britain are superior
to those in Iran. Roxana means that doctors understand themselves and
their performances according to the image that the public has and wants
from doctors. There is another side to this construction of imagined
images, for it could be said that the public have such images of doctors
because doctors demand to be seen in such a way. Either way, the dis-
courses around how a doctor should behave are constructed from the
situated positionings of doctors and the public. These imaginary and
constructed discourses about how a doctor should be are sometimes
made real. For example, in the extract below, Khorshid moralises on her
experiences in Britain and compares them to her Iranian experiences.
Khorshid: Iranian society is… materialistic. It is a Third World country,

erm… I don’t know… it’s a developing country. That is it. The whole sys-
tem is corrupt… but Britain is not like Iran at all because you are a human
here and you are treating humans. This was something that I learned here.
Khorshid’s narrative above shows the realities of living as a migrant in

the West; the ideas of the superior West are internalised by her. There is a
correlation between context, morality and identity here. In Iran, doctors
are usually employed in the private sector, whilst in Britain most doctors
are employed by the National Health Service; thus, financial gain was
one of the subjects they discussed in relation their jobs in Iran. Khorshid
was critical of financial issues, however, and stated that her philanthropic
ambitions were not satisfied when she was in Iran. For her, the class posi-
tion she had before coming to Britain was undermined by the whole
medical system because she felt that her performance as a doctor was
hindered by her image as a money-making machine. When I asked her
why she felt obliged to follow the ‘norms’ in Iran if she did not agree
with them, she answered that Iranian society requires a doctor to make
money and think about money. Thinking through an intersectional lens,

narratives about class in Britain were mostly intersected with race and
ethnicity, whereas aspects of race and ethnicity were absent from narra-
tives on Iran.
In some interviews, the issues of power relations and expertise were
referred to as ‘cultural’ and ‘historical’. These women migrants partici-
pate in the formation of these discourses around how professionals need
to perform in a specific way. Here, the type of cultural capital is different
from the type Bourdieu (1984) explores. Bourdieu argues that in order
for cultural capital to be valid, it has to be legitimate within the con-
text in which it is being used. Cultural capital gains its symbolic power
through ‘social capital’ and not its cultural aspect, because it is within a
social network in which a specific activity, possession or object becomes
valuable. Capitals vary in different contexts and this could be the reason
why the women in this study not only had to sit tests in the UK but were
also required to learn the medical customs of how to perform as a doc-
tor, as Khorshid demonstrated previously.
One commonality between all the quotations used in this chapter is
that these women give a superior positioning to Britain. They perceive
British society as inherently middle-class. Also, they use migration as a
form of cultural capital (not just economic capital), which strengthens
the notion of class for them as migrants. Another common point is that
these performances, narrated by women in situated positionings, become
meaningful in a specific locality. When these women were in Iran, their
local knowledge informed their practice. Once they migrated, their new
local knowledge gave meaning to their new performances and enabled
them to criticise, judge and evaluate their previous practices.
5.4 Translocational Class Performances: A

Conclusion
Class is, in part, produced performatively. Classed identities are per-
formed through repetitions of what I call ‘class-coded acts’. I believe
in the notions of agency in relation to performances and intentional-
ity behind acts. Performances form and become meaningful in a local-
ity where people give situated meanings to acts. The meanings we give
to acts are chosen, made and remade from the limited options avail-
able to us in any social field. This is why the meanings of an act can be
122 M. Fathi
different in different contexts, even if those meanings are imaginary and

constructed (e.g. Khorshid’s narratives). Meanings as well as imagina-
tions are constructed from a situated gaze and a situated positioning
(Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis 2002). If ‘becoming’ were placed within non-
normalisation (and non-naturalisation) discourses, it would not bestow
a powerful positioning on being a doctor. The same applies to acts and
performances; they need to be normalised in order to have the power to
name an act as classed or gendered (Butler 1993). The women perform
class-coded acts deliberately to convey certain identities. It is their classed
and cultural understanding of being doctors that affects their decision-
making about their performances.
Even in the normalisation process, acts are often consciously con-
structed in an overly familiar way that becomes unnoticeable to those
who supposedly possess such characteristics (see the discussion on nar-
ratives of lack presented before). Normalised performances confer
power to the performers. Hegemonic acts do not exist in a vacuum but,
rather, in relation to the actor’s situatedness and to her locality, to who
she thinks she is and to where she sees herself located socially and geo-
graphically. Acts can become translocational when a person migrates
(geographical location) or is located symbolically in a contradictory social
location (locations in social structure). The performativity of acts (the
creation of a subject through acts) is also translocational. In other words,
an ascribed identity attached to people changes when geographical,
structural and symbolic locations change; for example, ascribing different
identities to doctors in Iran and in Britain. These differences arising from
localities and situatedness create complexities that I call ‘translocational
performativity’.
Morality is a constituent of the performing middle-class self. Morality
is seen historically as an antithesis to working-classness (Lawler 2005;
Skeggs 1997). A doctor’s professional performances are instrumental in
constructing a moral self (as in Khorshid’s story). Consumerism of cer-
tain products like Persian carpets or a BMW car (as a performance) is
used to represent a respectable and middle-class self (Nina’s narrative).
Performative acts in becoming a doctor are formed differently in Iran
and the UK, although the position of a doctor is recognised as middle
class in both contexts. The main issue addressed in relation to differences
or similarities is that of power. These women’s experiences of success or
failure in their professions are assessed in relation to the reconfiguration
of power in each context. For some of these women, attaching oneself to
an Iranian lifestyle devalues their social class in Britain, mainly because

Iran is not presented as a reputable country. Acts jeopardising the wom-
en’s social class are considered ‘Iranian’. For them, living in a Western
society as migrants takes away their sense of individuality to a great
degree. The perception of them as immigrants is the opposite of how
middle-class individuals are perceived (Lawler 2008). For some of them,
acting Iranian is associated with a lack of respectability and immorality,
whereas acting British brings them morality and the feeling of being a
responsible citizen (Khorshid).
In conclusion, in order to be considered middle-class in Britain these
women need to cross invisible boundaries of diaspora—a more compli-
cated process than that assumed in the usual understanding of integra-
tion, which emphasises speaking the language, getting a job and paying
taxes. The performances that make them similar to what they think of
as Englisi (hegemonic British society) are central to them feeling worthy
enough to be members of British society (this is the theme of the next
chapter). When Khorshid or Monir say, ‘I dress like these people’, they
mean that they have found ways to fit in, to be accepted and to be recog-
nised as autonomous individuals in the hegemonic British society. These
are efforts to make themselves visible in terms of class but invisible in
terms of race or ethnicity. If performing class means to narrate moralities
(such as in Khorshid’s narrative) or consumerism (Nina’s case) then it
also represents who these women are and how their acts constitute their
identities.
Note
1. Capital words in interview extracts are uttered in English. The rest are
translated from Farsi.
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CHAPTER 6
Classed Racialisation
The shift in British scholarship from race relations to the study of migra-
tion has happened in the context of focus on integration and commu-
nity cohesion, shifting attention from US studies on race and racism to
a European approach (Erel et al. 2016). A particular focus on migra-
tion in the context of Europe and the role of the UK in the race, rac-
ism and migration debate, has happened in the rise of European anxieties
about Muslim people in Europe and the issues around ‘cultural other-
ness’, cultural racism and toleration (Meer 2013). Meer, by analysing the
relationships between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, shows the racial
categories of religious minorities continue to be formed. According to
Erel et al. (2016) critical work in relation to race and racism has been
lacking in the literature on European migration. Despite the centrality
of the concept of race to the study of processes of racialisation (Murji
and Solomos 2005), partly due to the turn to an analysis of cultural
otherness and religious minority groups (Back and Solomos 2000;
Meer 2013), race is rarely talked about (Lentin 2014). In their critical
review of the literature on race, racism and migration, Erel et al. (2016,
pp. 1341–1342) identify three articulations that show the nexus between
race and migration in recent years: (1) ‘Changing migrations—continu-
ities of racism’: an approach that emphasises the continuity of historic
linkages between post-war race-making and migration, underlying simi-
larities between racialised citizens and non-citizens as subjects of migra-
tion discourse. (2) ‘Complex migrations—differentialist racialization’:
this focuses on processes of racialisation that differentially shape migrant

128 M. Fathi
subjects to effect disadvantages unique to their citizenship status. It also

highlights interesting formations of race. It does not deny that race is
analytically relevant for understanding migration, rather it explores how
connections between racialisation and migration are shaped through
gender, class and geography. (3) ‘Post-racial migration—beyond rac-
ism’: this raises the question of whether race, racism and racialisation are
meaningful analytical categories for making sense of distinctions between
host and immigrant, and between old and newer migration discourses,
amounting to a denial of the significance of race and racism.
This chapter falls within Erel and colleagues’ second categorisa-
tion. The discourses around race are present in the form of racialisation
and citizenship status of migrant women whose experiences of race are
intersectionally formed. Throughout the last few years in which I have
read, written and spoken to Iranian migrants, I have witnessed two pro-
cesses of racialisation amongst Iranians, which has become more appar-
ent and vocal, particularly in social media, (Faris and Rahimi 2015).
The hidden racisms that used to lurk discreetly among Iranians mainly
against Afghan, black and Indian people (Asayesh 2006) have become
more expressed and performed amongst social media users. One reason
is because these platforms (social media) provide a window of oppor-
tunity and space for discussions between members inside and outside
Iran. In my two studies with Iranian migrants in 2009–2010 and later in
2013–2015, the fieldworks provided some space for the women to
express their feelings of foreignness, being the other, Iranian, migrant,
etc. to surface. Racialisation is a term that has come to be widely used in
the discussions around race and ethnicity, particularly to ‘signal the pro-
cesses by which ideas about race are constructed, come to be regarded as
meaningful and are acted upon’ (Murji and Solomos 2005, p. 1). David
Goldberg (2002) draws attention to the lack of clarity of the concept of
racialisation and explains that it is partly due to the focus on the culture
in social sciences, when racialisation is read in terms of cultural othering
(see Meer 2013). In this and following chapters the processes of raciali-
sation are discussed with the difference that, here, processes of racialised
othering are more colourful whereas the next chapter relates these differ-
ences to emotional attachments as part of belonging.
The narratives around racialisation offered in this chapter are largely
divided into two layers or categories. The first are those narratives that
women tell when they are subjects of racism, and the second are those,
which they actively use to draw racialised boundaries between themselves
6 CLASSED RACIALISATION 129
and others, including migrant and non-migrant groups. As these bound-

aries are intersectional (they are not just about race, but about class,
gender, immigration status, etc.), this chapter focuses on how these
racialised boundaries are intersected with class and to what extent these
migrants use them to position themselves within power relations that
help them construct a classed identity.
6.1 Being Racialised
Being a migrant, woman and at some point in their lives being unem-
ployed (the period between arriving in the UK and completing their
accreditation), carries feelings of foreignness, powerlessness and inferior-
ity. The main element of racialisation is to make the powerless visible.
The issue of the invisibility of privilege is not a new subject. Rothenberg
(2000) in analysing middle-class parents argues that people do not see
the ways in which they are privileged. One main reason for this is that
privilege is invisible (Fine 2016). As was highlighted in Dyer’s book
(1997) which among others, showed the difference between white and
the visibility of the migrant, whiteness has gone beyond the catego-
ries of racial and ethnic discourses. It is culturally constructed in impe-
rial nations such as Britain through specific cultural characteristics such
as tolerance, values and manners (Wemyss 2009). Hence it tends to
be naturalised and invisible due to the knowledge that people in posi-
tions of privilege have about the injuries that are caused because of it
(Sayer 2002). In previous chapters I discussed the classed invisibility in
the women, shown by a form of embarrassment in talking about their
privileged backgrounds. Here I will discuss the importance of racialisa-
tion as a marker of class, a form of application of the imperialist view
towards oneself and others, and the pains associated to this hierarchical
positioning.
The most explicit example of being racialised was Roya. She compares
her life as a teenager in a Scandinavian country with her adult life in
Britain. She recalls how she was singled out in her youth because of her
‘Eastern’ appearance. She believes that in order to succeed as a migrant
one should blend into one’s surroundings because, in her experience,
she had been reminded constantly that she did not belong there. Roya
indicated that in order to become invisible she had dyed her hair lighter
when she was younger as well as educating herself to the highest possible
level and learning to speak the language like a ‘native’. However, Roya’s
130 M. Fathi
views of herself and the world changed after she became educated. She
said that her sense of foreignness was felt less in European countries
where brown eyes and black hair were more common, such as in Spain
or Italy, rather than in Scandinavian countries where the majority of the
population have lighter hair and blue eyes.
Roya: It [migration] had its bad sides because you are a foreigner and you
feel you are not at home. I think appearance is very important. Everything
needs to be in harmony with the environment you live in and appearance
is one of those things; for example, if we [Iranians] travel to Spain or Italy,
we may not feel like we are immigrants as much compared to a place where
everyone is blonde [and has] blue eyes.
Becoming a dentist was being perceived as much more than entering

a profession; it was seen as a technique to become an invisible citizen,
to move from migrant status. It was part of an assimilation process that
Roya consciously chose, aiming to overcome the racism she faced on a
daily basis in a country where blonde hair and blue eyes were seen as the
norm. She continues:
Roya: The countries that are not used to foreigners, erm, and faces that
obviously do not belong there, it is obvious that we are not hybrid, and
we are completely from another place. It is difficult because you are a for-
eigner, you are a stranger, and unconsciously they place you at the bot-
tom of society and they do not ask you what you do or where you work
or whether you pay tax. They immediately think of you as a foreigner, a
scrounger in society, until they talk to you. Because of this, in those socie-
ties you are forced to have a lighter hair colour.
Mastoureh: Really?
Roya: I used to dye my hair from a young age and it was because in that
society it was not possible [not to dye your hair]. And because my hair was
long and I was attracting attention, either good or bad. From a bad point
of view [people would say], ‘Oh, she is a foreigner,’ even when they see
you from the back. ‘Oh, she is a foreigner because her hair is black’.
Roya, is very well aware of the position she is being put at as a foreigner,
‘the bottom of the society’. The fact that she mentions that no one asks
‘who you are’ or ‘where you work’ are important in the lack of differ-
entiation between different groups of migrants in her view. What Roya
refers to is close to Wemyss’ (2009) analysis of discourses around migra-

tion in Britain. She argues that ‘white’ subjects are made invisible by nor-
malising processes that place them on centre stage and other subjects are
made ‘others’ by the constant difference that may exist between them
and those placed invisibly in such powerful positions. Roya’s appearance
in the way it was standing out (long dark hair, very visible characteris-
tics) was damaging to the degree of her feeling as if she belonged, as was
shown in her explanation of her efforts to become invisible by dying her
hair, or learning to speak the language like a native.
Christensen (2008) argues that the question of belonging and unbe-
longing in Nordic countries has become a dominant discourse in public
debate. She argues that strong differentiations between ‘us’ and ‘them’
define communities, whilst certain groups are simultaneously defined as
being outside these communities. Here, of course, intersectionality is
much needed to understand the nuanced experience of Roya. Situated
intersectionality enables us to understand the differences that our posi-
tionality along the axis of power allows us to see. Her understanding of
being an immigrant would have been different if she had to struggle to
obtain citizenship (as opposed to her being a citizen from a young age)
as a marginalised asylum seeker. In other words, she would not be recall-
ing that experience as an enjoyable account of difference if she had a dif-
ferent employment and citizenship status.
Farnaz expressed her feelings of being Othered in a similar way but
in a different context. She expressed her anxieties of having a precarious
position coupled with feelings of being singled out because of her skin
colour and discriminated against by her colleagues in a hospital. I asked
her about what negative issues she found about her job, working as a
doctor in the UK. To this, she answered by going back in time, remem-
bering some memories of being seen as a foreigner:
Farnaz: You cannot believe it, only 2 days after I received my job offer, I
received another letter from the Home Office, saying that if I don’t notify
them within 28 days whether I have found a job or not, I should leave
the country. I had decided not to go back to Iran at any price. Because
there was no return for me, when I came out, I told myself I would never
go back to Iran, ever. Because of this, I had looked at the universities [in
Britain] to study in order to stay. When I received the [job offer] letter,
my visa was sorted, and I worked there for 6 months. It was really bad. In
that city, they had problems with Pakistani people. I was the only foreigner
132 M. Fathi
who was working in that ward. I was in A & E ward and when Pakistani
patients were coming in the hospital, they were treated totally different to
the way English patients were being treated. This was quite shocking to
me. Because I did not know that as a doctor or a nurse, as a professional,
someone could discriminate between patients like this. The bad thing
was that because my skin colour was different from the rest of the staff,
I was darker I mean, when a Pakistani patient was coming there, the only
thing he would ask me was that, ‘Are you a Muslim?’ And after all, I was a
Muslim, so I was saying that ‘Yes, I am’. And then they were thinking that
they [patients] should be friends with me, and I was working for the other
group [white doctors]. I was left in the middle. On one side I was with the
English and on the other, I was with Pakistanis. I was in such an awkward
position. I was inexperienced, and did not know what to do. It was so bad,
that in my last working day, I had my appraisal and when the consultant
asked me about my experience, I told him that ‘Your ward is really bad,
there are some of the people who work here are racist, I think’.
Farnaz draws references to two different groups whom, to her, are in

opposite camps: the white doctors and Pakistani patients. She finds it
uncomfortable that she was characterised by patients as ‘one of them’.
Farnaz mentions that she had to confess that she was a Muslim and she
did not want to be seen as one who is ‘the Other’ in her workplace, and
so liable to be singled out by her colleagues. However, the fact that in
some situations she had to take sides, put her in a difficult position in
relation to her colleagues and to her patients. From a situated position-
ing, Farnaz reflects quite analytically on this dual positioning of being
a doctor but looking like a Muslim Pakistani person, two contradictory
(to her) characteristics that did not make it easy for her to be assigned to
one category. She was experiencing a new form of racism, what Taguieff
(2001) calls ‘differentialist racism’, which has emerged from biological
racism but has gained new forms through processes of normalisation.
As such, differentialist racism can be applied in a society when it is cou-
pled with contemporary politics and rules and regulations existing in that
social context. Going back to Farnaz’s experience, she simply did not
feel that she fitted into her work place because of this. Her contradic-
tory social location as ‘the integrated’ migrant (being a doctor but being
counted as a foreigner) was reflected in another part of her interview:
Farnaz: There are some practices where all of them are English, I mean
there is one practice for example that all of them are English, and when I
went for an interview they did not accept me. I knew that they were not
going to accept me and it was because of my skin colour, I knew it, they
told me, and it is just round the corner from here, they said that there it
has never happened that a foreign doctor work in this surgery.
M: How did you know that? They told you this?
Farnaz: No, everybody knew it. They told me this as well as the one who
helped me, he said to me that ‘Hey Farnaz, don’t go for it. They are not
going to let you in. They are not going to hire you’, and I said that ‘No, I
want to go.’ And in the interview, they actually asked me. They asked me
‘What problem do you think you will have?’ I said, ‘My skin colour’. They
said ‘Why do you say this?’ I said ‘Because the majority of your patients are
[white] English, and they might have issues with me as a foreigner.’ They
said ‘Have you ever had any problems with anyone?’ I said ‘No, never, but
they can have.’ At the end they did not offer me the job and I knew that
it was not going to happen. There are some other practices that they don’t
hire English doctors because all of them are Indians or Pakistani and they
know how to deal with each other, and they get along with each other
and work together. We are stuck in between because we are Iranian in this
country, because the majority do not see you as an Indian or Pakistani, but
something in-between.
Such a telling narrative from Farnaz highlights the ambivalences about

her experience of being racialised and its intersection with class. Farnaz
mentions that she knew she would not get the job because she was
aware of the race politics existing in that practice, but despite being
advised against it, she applied for the job to make a point. To her, being
a foreigner was perhaps something she was reminded of more often than
other women who had migrated at a younger age, or had pale complex-
ions, or even worked in surgical fields of medicine, due to her skin col-
our. The experiences of being seen as disadvantaged and racialised into
a specific powerless category are intersectional and they cannot be pin-
pointed to a particular factor. She referred to her skin colour a few times,
showing the prominence of this characteristic in her everyday experi-
ences of living in the UK, similar to Roya’s experiences in Scandinavian
countries. Ghassan Hage (1998), in White Nation, addresses and dif-
ferentiates between the governance and the everyday where the lat-
ter is produced by the former. Constructing identities in relation to the
experiences of being singled out are everyday experiences of migrants,
regardless of them being ‘integrated’ or not. As Winter (2011) argues,
134 M. Fathi
even those ‘good’ migrants who are seen out of the marginal position-
ing, are at risk of becoming constituted as ‘the Other’. As we can see,
there is diversity amongst these Iranian women’s narratives. Their expe-
rience of racial groupings changes after they obtain a more recognised
status in the UK. The mentality of ‘siding’ with ‘one’s own type’ changes
as different cycles of migration pass, affecting the everyday experience,
although this experience comes with systems of governmentality and
control of the self:
Farnaz: I think this is discrimination that because my name is X and it is

obvious that I am foreigner, [I do not get the job], but when I think about
it, if I was an English person, if a foreigner comes along [as well as an
English person], I would give the job to the English person. The person
who helped me was an Iranian person, but it was my own attempt.
A similar narrative by Shirin refers to this change of positioning after

years of living as a doctor in the UK that diffuses the experiences of
being a foreigner:
Shirin: In our practice, we only employ English people, although we have a

few applications from foreigners but mainly English.
Mastoureh: Why is that?
Shirin: Less hassle.
However, perhaps this feeling is not shared by Roxana, who believed

that:
Mastoureh: What do you think about your nationality? When someone

asks you where you are from what do you feel? Oh, by the way are you
British?
Roxana: Yes. I don’t like it that they ask me all the time. I am tired of it.
They ask you 50 times a day. But I say I am from Iran. I tell them that I
am originally from Iran. I never tell them that I am Persian. If they don’t
understand where Iran is, then I say I am Persian. Then they understand it.
Sometimes some people ask me: ‘Are you from Iraq?’ and I say: ‘No, Iran,
the neighbour of Iraq.’ I don’t like it that they ask me repeatedly. One of
the reasons they ask me is that because they ask me, they think I am from
Italy, or Spain or France […] they don’t understand it. And sometimes I
say to myself that I want to wear a placard which says: ‘I am Iranian’. So

that people don’t ask me any more. Don’t ask me please. I am tired. (Both
laugh)
Discrimination and being treated as the Other is so embedded in the

early-life narratives of these women that one needs to differentiate
between the periods of migratory processes and citizenship status of the
migrant groups we are researching about. Once one’s positionality is
more ‘stable’ in terms of socio-economic status and citizenship rights, it
is possible to make stronger claims about belonging and inclusion (see
the next chapter). For example, in the following extract, we can envisage
the ready-made story that Niloufar has prepared in order to explain who
she is and to correct British people’s errors:
Mastoureh: When someone asks where you are from, what do you say?
Niloufar: My patient asked me ‘Where are you from?’ the other day. I said
‘Guess’, he said ‘Finland’. I said: ‘Iran’. As soon as I said Iran, his whole
face became bitter. His smile was wiped off his face [pointing to her lips].
But I explained to him, ‘Look, Iran is the same as Persia.’ They are com-
mon people. Whatever they see on TV, they would believe that, you know.
They don’t want to believe that 70% of the university students in Iran are
female. And this is the UNICEF report, not the report from the Iranian
government.
Niloufar’s identity narrative that clarifies the position of Iran by relating

it to the concept of Persia and Empire, and pointing out the geographi-
cal illiteracy of her patient has been noted by Kamiar (2007; see also Zia-
Ebrahimi 2011). However her pointing this out helps her to construct
an important narrative in presenting someone who should be more val-
ued because of the past but also because of the present situation of her
country, as she refers to the high number of educated girls.
Comparisons made between themselves and other racial groupings
are an important part of these women’s narratives of racialisation. On
one hand we have the English, and on the other we see other racialised
groups, foreigners.
Other migrants and English people should be placed opposite each
other in order to create two sides of the equation and place claims of
inclusion between them. As a group that belongs to neither category, it
gives some of these women a privileged positioning. Where they use the
136 M. Fathi
English as a point of reference to establish their own positioning distinct

from other migrants and close to the English, their comparisons are not
always about difference but, rather, are racialised hierarchies that indicate
power positionings. The next section shows this process of boundary
maintenance whilst the women are racialising others.
6.2 Racialising Others
Whilst integration and naturalisation policies in the UK (such as English
language and citizenship tests) were understood as a solution to the
problem of ‘having too many migrants here’ (Azadeh), they are seen as
insufficient in creating British subjects. Azadeh was an academic young
woman who did her Ph.D. in genetics and was quite vocal about her
position as a ‘different’ kind of migrant. She was very engaged in making
a difference between herself and ‘those who do not make an effort’ to
become British:
Azadeh: I think what you are doing [research into belonging] is redun-
dant. The Home Office has already done research into this, I mean about
migrants and British values. Go and read the Life in the UK book, all of
this information is already there. There are some who know things about
Britain, and those who don’t get it. Regardless of who they are, you can-
not make them British, they won’t put in an effort.
What Azadeh refers to is an important element of boundary maintenance

between new groups of migrants, and should be read within discourses
of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ (Andreouli and Dashtipour 2014).
These narratives revolve around ambivalence. Discourses of ambiva-
lence, as shown in the works of Billig (1995) on nationalism, use theo-
ries of nationalism entangled in two opposing themes of universalism and
particularism. But in terms of individual characteristics of racialisation
of migrant groups when one is counted as a migrant oneself, similarly
one occupies a position entangled between similarities and differences
that are conflicting positions in Self and Other dichotomy (Andreouli
2013). The imaginaries of superiority and inferiority that once existed
between the white colonialist and the uncivilised slaves (Bhabha 1994)
are translated into contemporary issues such as ‘inability to become a
British citizen’ and are applied to migrants by migrants. It became clear
from the rest of the interview with Azadeh that these differences were
intersectional: racial differences where class played an important role in

boundary maintenance between those who earn their citizenship and
those who don’t (Andreouli and Dashtipour 2014). Andreouli and
Howarth (2012) argue that this ambivalence and distinction is obvious
from policy documents on earned citizenship and is absorbed into the
‘common-sense’ of naturalised British citizens. This section of the chap-
ter draws on the narratives that the women used in order to differentiate
themselves from a mass, underserving Other, to which they attached dif-
ferent forms of personal, community and national characteristics.
Integration and ‘the ability to integrate’ is an important element in
these differentiations, although always vague and unclarified. Notably,
they almost always position Iranians as superior, clever, able and
knowledgeable:
Setareh: I always believed that Iranians are clever people in any field and
that they are successful. From my point of view, we are the source of the
world’s knowledge.
Integration is presented here as a form of capital that not all migrants are
able to command. The fact that the process of integration is not as easy
as it seems, and that Iranians have the intellect to perform it, is impor-
tant in the narratives that separate Iranians from other migrant groups. It
is perhaps more telling if we look at what Giti presents about integration:
Giti: I think it is very important. The problem with English society is that
migrants are not integrated. Erm… for example, an Indian family, they
have been here for generations but they still speak Hindi or they still live
in Bangla Town. This is the problem with society here. So it is worse for
them than it is for me, who is freer in society; my kids in society are like
English kids.1
Setareh and Giti’s remarks about Iranians and non-Iranians point at a

deeper issue than simply learning the language or becoming educated;
they refer to the institutional and structural importance attached to
assimilation that defines the relations among racial groups and values
them (see Yuval-Davis 2011a, b, c and the next chapter). Iranians are
constructed as being able to integrate better because they adopt Western
lifestyles and blend in more quickly. Foreignness here is constructed in
relation to people from ‘other’ countries or racial groups.
138 M. Fathi
For Giti, her Iranian identity requires her to portray a superior self
towards people from different racial backgrounds. These comparisons are
especially made with groups that these women place in a lower position.
The position of Iranians within this hierarchy is ‘equal’ to that of the
English. This aspiration is not always hidden; it may be plainly expressed,
as mentioned by Monir:
Monir: I am like the English people. I do not feel inferior to them.
Looking ‘up’ to the category of white English is an important characteri-

sation in the processes of racialising others. Giti similarly aspires to bring
up her children as English children. For her, ‘white English’ is an invis-
ible racial category into which she attempts to assimilate. Whilst I was
interviewing her in her flat, she was in the process of getting ready to go
to a party. She wore some makeup whilst I was observing her and, after-
wards, picked up a (seemingly) expensive coat that she said was a ‘very
Englisi’ brand, one that I have forgotten now. Such characteristics of her
lifestyle, aspirations for her future children and positioning in relation to
other racial groups show how she draws boundaries between different
groupings of people that are both racialised and classed. For Giti, and
Monir, English is taken as the main reference group to which everyone
else should assimilate but, of course, the boundaries of this assimilation
are not defined. At the same time, Giti and Setareh believe that not eve-
ryone can become like the English, but Iranians can. Giti’s narrative is
entangled in ‘the new racism’, where culture and difference, rather than
skin colour and hierarchy, are discussed as the principles of differentia-
tion (Fortier 1999). If, for Farnaz, skin colour is an important form of
differentiation, for others with lighter shades of skin colour, it was more
nuanced.
These narratives should be read in relation to discourses around the
‘visibility’ of migrants. Migrants who are more visible because they main-
tain certain practices, such as speaking languages other than English or
living in areas such as ‘Bangla Town’, are more backward. Living in sub-
urban areas could be seen as a way for migrants to become more English,
as could talking to one’s children solely in English, striving to better one-
self and performing a middle-class identity. As one can see, the women
I quoted above do not include themselves in positionings about race
politics. Because within the category of ‘foreigner’, they see some oth-
ers who are positioned as a foreigner more than themselves: for example,
Giti uses Indians and Bangladeshis for comparison, not other European
citizens (who are also migrants). She sees her own and her future chil-
dren’s invisibility as a way to preserve certain characteristics of their
Iranian heritage. I asked her whether she would talk to her future chil-
dren in Farsi or in English at home.
Giti: Hmm, Farsi. Erm… well, of course they should know English but,
erm… yes, they should speak Farsi.
She mentions that her future children may speak their mother language,
but when Indians do the same they are branded as a problem in English
society. Such narratives that view others as lacking the ability to become
like us is a colonial gaze. Homi Bhabha has used this mentality to draw
on the presentation of slaves as inherently incapable of being part of
the colonising society (Bhabha 1994). As he argues, if one is shown to
have the capability of becoming part of the hegemonic power, then the
whole legitimacy of that top-down power is questioned. Similarly, Giti
believes that she would be able to keep aspects of her Iranian identity
without dropping out of the hegemonic Britishness though others can-
not, despite their long-term settlement in the country. To represent
black people, Afghans and Indians as inferior, Giti expresses a complex
process of identification and otherness. The kind of racialised categories
Giti talks about are hierarchical as well as intersectional, because she talks
about the symbolic values attached to a profession (being a doctor), a
language (Hindi, as inferior compared to Farsi and English) and to a
choice of neighbourhood (affluent areas instead of ‘Bangla Town’). The
intersection of space, language, performances such as wearing an Engilisi
coat and racial characteristics such as skin colour helps to construct one
as belonging to a ‘superior’ group and consign others to the ‘inferior’.
A hierarchically constructed categorisation of racial groupings is
meaningful for self-identification and the ‘right’ to belong, which is dis-
cussed more comprehensively in the next chapter. But for the present
discussion, the usefulness of hierarchy in such discourse is that its rigidity
clarifies the position of one in relation to others and avoids the sense of
fluidity that may well be useful for a short-term identity narrative but is
not sustainable, susceptible as it is to challenges brought about by con-
stant changes to the context, the political situation and people’s personal
and political statuses. Giti places herself in the hierarchy of British soci-
ety, where other migrants do not have a respectable positioning, in which
140 M. Fathi
some migrants are placed in lesser positions than others. More signifi-
cant, though, is her seeing the symbolic value of ethnic origin, which is
also classed. For her, the quest for and the location of cultural particular-
ity is intertwined with the boundaries of classed ‘Iranianness’.
6.3 Racialisation in Class Construction

There are two processes of hierarchisation evident here: Firstly, in Giti’s
story, class is hidden within the racialised groupings of people, but not
in the same way for all. In her narrative, race is classed and some groups,
even if they become professional subjects, are not able to acquire a mid-
dle-class status, unlike Iranians.
Secondly, an understanding of race and class causes an internalisa-
tion of the hierarchies of power and an assumption of categories as con-
stant and fixed, which is associated with a fixed identity. In this way, ‘the
Other’ remains ‘the Other’ forever (Hall 1990). The belief that one is
hierarchically superior or inferior is, of course, a historical and politi-
cal process that should not be dismissed when examining racial class or
classed race. If Giti considers Indians and Bangladeshis as ‘not integrated
enough’ because they live in ‘Bangla Town’, speak Hindi or are unedu-
cated, it can be assumed that other people place her in a similar posi-
tioning, as was shown in the research done by Andreouli and Dashtipour
in 2014. Giti performs her invisibility by using a variety of commodi-
ties and acquiring a middle-class lifestyle similar to that of invisible white
English people. Such techniques applied by migrants as a way to reduce
the experiences of racialisation have been discussed before: for example,
Fortier (1999) argues, in relation to Italian migrants in London, that the
invisibility of whiteness was used to challenge the boundaries between
Italian and British identities. She states firstly that the meaning of invis-
ibility emerged from the racialisation of immigration and multicultural
politics and that its adoption by Italians may be read as a claim for equal-
ity with Britons. Fortier contends that this invisibility was the outcome
of an acceptance of the Italians’ claim to have an equal standing with
Britons after Italy became a member of the European Union. Invisibility
is not a product of the conditions of marginalisation and imposed silence
that configure the ‘invisibility’ of black people in Britain. Secondly,
Fortier states that the notion that ‘visibility’ is couched in politics of dif-
ference both mimics and calls into question the invisibility of ‘whiteness’
(Dyer 1997).
Being invisible, of course, plays to tunes of racial visibility, as discussed

above; but it also influences the extent to which a migrant questions the
power relations that distinguish between her and others in a particular
context. One’s reading of one’s role in a society will always be tangen-
tial to the context within which one is working and living. In the fol-
lowing quotation Nina gives an example of how she felt her non-English
ness; lack of history in a context and her existence on the fringes of the
British job market is feeding into her visibility and non-visibility at the
same time.
Nina: Other English people [working class or middle class] always look
at you as a foreigner. You feel it less in London but, for example, I went
to another city in the north of England and worked for a few months and
you feel it a lot because they have not seen foreigners there. They have not
seen blacks much, for example. I saw many patients, especially those [in
the] upper classes or those who were a bit older, who preferred to be seen
by an English doctor rather than a foreign doctor, even though they’ve
been treated by Indian doctors and Indian doctors have been in this
country for years. But, even so, they [the English] still go to their own
kind. blonde, blue eyes. You feel it, and then you feel that you can never
become British, you can never become a British subject. You become just
a British object.
Her sense of alienation becomes further evident in her remark that

migrants can never become British subjects, which might denote a form
of agency and belonging; rather, a person, through the naturalisation
process, would become a British object, denoting a lack of belonging.
Nina’s narrative shows how participatory aspects of citizenship and the
political strategies used to create belonging, such as citizenship and the
naturalisation process, do not necessarily create a sense of belonging
among migrants (Yuval-Davis 2006). These processes fail to address the
nuances of the everyday lives of those who go through them.
6.4 Conclusion
In this chapter I have analysed the importance of racialisation experiences
in these women’s lives. On the one hand they are subjected to racial-
ised attitudes in British society, and on the other they act as an agent
racialising different groups. Racialisation is a broad term and has been
142 M. Fathi
used widely in racial and ethnic studies, here I use it more in relation to
the experiences of being a doctor and to class identities. The first part
of the chapter addressed everyday experiences of being seen as outsider,
intruder and scrounger. Roya and Farnaz indicated that these racial-
ised references to their skin and hair colour were accompanied by feel-
ings of inferiority. Everyday experiences here are far from the normative
stratification that are visualised in British policies and British public dis-
courses around migration. These discourses constantly refer the differ-
ence between ‘types’ of migrants and the aim of creating a society that
suits and greets skilled migrants, not any person. It is also far from the
discourses around toleration and fairness (Wemyss 2009). The experi-
ence of being racially treated and put in less advantaged positions when
compared to English counterparts is important when thinking about the
dynamics of race relations and of belonging to British society (the topic
of the next chapter). As a result and a response, in my view, the terms
skilled migrant, doctor and Iranian were used to delineate this distance
between themselves and the non-migrant population in society. This
positioning links to the second part of the chapter that shows the process
of racialising different groups of migrants is readily embraced by some of
these women. This is indicative of hegemonic discussions about the ‘fear
of migrants’, ‘migrants as a burden’, ‘the enemy within’ and ‘a threat to
the fabric of British society (Koser 2011; Yuval-Davis 2011a; Cole 2009,
p. 1681). It is also related to the hegemonic understanding of Iranian
race/ethnicity in relation to European, American and white by differen-
tiating it from the categories of Afghan, Indian and Pakistani, a national-
ist and racial narrative that has gained momentum again after a period
of identification with Islam in post-revolutionary Iran. In these racialised
discourses, profession plays an important role in placing someone within
power relations, and within inclusion and exclusion circles, in British
society and specific social class groups.
Note
1. She spoke as though she had children, but at the time of the interview she
did not have any.
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Andreouli, E., & Caroline, H. (2013). National Identity, Citizenship and
Immigration: Putting Identity in Context. Journal for the Theory of Social
Behaviour 43 (3): 361–382.
Andreouli, E., & Dashtipour P. (2014). British Citizenship and the ‘Other’: An
Analysis of the Earned Citizenship Discourse. Journal of Community and
Applied Social Psychology 24: 100–110.
Asayesh, G. (2006). I grew up thinking I was white. In A. Zanganeh (Ed.), My
sister, guard your veil; My brother, guard your eyes: Uncensored Iranian voices.
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Back, L., & Solomos, J. (eds.) (2000). Theories of race and racism. London:
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Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.
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Cole, M. (2009). A plethora of ‘Suitable Enemies’: British Racism at the Dawn
of the Twenty-First Century. Ethnic and Racial Studies 32 (9):1671–1685.
Dyer, R. (1997). White. London: Routledge.
Erel, U., Murji, K., & Nahaboo Z. (2016). Understanding the contemporary
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studies. Oxford: Blackwell.
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community, culture, difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Kamiar, M. (2007). Country Name Calling: The Case of Iran vs. Persia. Focus on
Geography 49(4): 2–11.
Koser, K. (2011). Refugees, states and the security agenda. In Conceptual
Problems in Forced Migration Seminar Series, University of East London.
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multiculturalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(8): 1268–1285.
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Sayer, D. (2002). Capitalism and modernity: An excursus on Marx and Weber.
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Taguieff, P. (2001). The Forces of Prejudice: On Racism and Its Doubles.
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Wemyss, G. (2009). The invisible empire: White discourse, tolerance and belonging.
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Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of
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CHAPTER 7
Classed Belonging
Belonging has become a heated issue in politics and academia.1 Since

2015, and the influx of Middle Eastern and Northern African migrants
in European countries, the issues around borders, migration and belong-
ing have yet again become an important topic in social and politi-
cal debates. But what does the sense of belonging mean and how is it
related to translocational class that I address in this book?
Identities and belonging are created and reconstructed in the interre-
lationships of different social divisions (Yuval-Davis 2006a, b). Belonging
is about who is included and who is excluded; hence, it is an important
element in understanding who we are and who we are not. Yuval-Davis
details an analytical framework for the study of belonging and politics
of belonging that I am using in this chapter. She argues that the poli-
tics of belonging ‘comprises specific political projects aimed at construct-
ing belonging in a particular way to particular collectivities that are, at
the same time, themselves being constructed by these projects in very
particular ways’ (Yuval-Davis 2006a, p. 197). Belonging is not a one-
dimensional, fixed and permanent feeling towards a homeland or geo-
graphical space; rather, it is a social process narrated to express feelings of
safety and security. She argues that there are three major facets on which
belonging is constructed:
1. Social locations: being a woman, black, British, or Iranian, are not

just social locations; belonging to a particular gender, race, nation
is a category that has certain positionality along axes of power

146 M. Fathi
Social locations are never constructed along one axis of difference;

in other words, they are always intersectional (Yuval-Davis 2006a,
pp. 197–202).
2. Identifications and emotional attachments: identities are narra-
tives and stories that people tell about who they are. They could
be individual or collective and are generationally transmitted in a
selective way. The stories reveal ‘emotional investments and desires
for attachments’. These emotions are in fluctuation and are chang-
ing all the time (Yuval-Davis 2006a, pp. 202–203).
3. Ethical and political values refer to how these social locations and
identities are judged and evaluated; for instance, ideologies that
define the boundaries for particular identities in exclusionary ways
(Yuval-Davis 2006a, pp. 203–204). Using the concept of ‘situated
imaginations’, she argues that where a nation’s or community’s
boundaries are depends on people’s social locations, people’s expe-
riences, definitions of self and on the values that divide the mem-
bers into Us and Them.
Using this framework, and locating the narratives of class within the
interrelations between belonging and the politics of belonging, I intend
to draw attention to the role profession plays in migrants’ claims of
belonging as legitimate, genuine and distinguished compared to those of
others. As such, belonging is very strongly tied to the notion of class in
diaspora. This chapter is also linked quite strongly to the previous chap-
ter, which addressed racialisation processes in the lives of these women.
Here, I argue that the categories of the ‘Other’ or the ‘outsider’ are
constructed in the lives of these migrant women not only in relation to
race but also in terms of occupational groupings and classed categories.
Understanding ‘professional belonging’ is significant in a context where
borders, racial and ethnic differences and nationality seem to become
increasingly more prominent, if problematic, for Iranians living in
Western countries.2
Belonging has become more pertinent due to growing globalisation
and multiculturalism (Christensen 2008) both within the arguments
put forward by proponents of these concepts and those who are against
them. The meaning of belonging is, therefore, both multi-layered and
multi-dimensional, and includes the elements of memory and spaces
(Fortier 1999), positionality (Anthias 2008) and power relations (Yuval-
Davis 2011). While the women in this book are regarded as skilled or
7 CLASSED BELONGING 147
desirable migrants (Wemyss 2009), they are nevertheless reminded that

they belong somewhere else. Strikingly, the women’s narratives about
class are framed by their feelings of otherness and foreignness about
themselves. At the same time, they are involved in othering different
groups of people (as discussed in the previous chapter) and in doing so
they reiterate hierarchies of belonging amongst people from different
ethnic backgrounds. Although their profession does not provide a suffi-
ciently safe haven to protect them from daily racism, as we will read from
the narratives that will follow this discussion, it is used in their stories
to indicate belonging to a class rather than to an ethnicity and to draw
boundaries between self and the other. This chapter shows this ambiva-
lence and temporariness of the feelings of belonging and permanency of
the position of the ‘immigrant’ and ‘foreigner’.
7.1 Foreignness, Power and Class

Foreignness is an important theme in these migrant women’s narra-
tives of class and belonging. Feelings of non-belonging affect individuals
negatively and people express belonging to where they think they can
become part of the social system. Although foreigners were frequently
referred to by these women, the term itself was confusing for them. Who
is a foreigner? When do we stop being a foreigner? How can we distin-
guish between a foreigner and a non-foreigner? I asked Giti whether she
belonged to Britain or Iran.
Giti: To Iran.
Mastoureh: Why?
Giti: Because it is your country. Your culture is there. Your thought[s]

[are] there. You are never happy about things here [Britain] because they
are not yours. In Iran, whatever happens we are getting upset… you think
about Iran all the time. And here, you are always a foreigner. Life is more
secure for you there. No one counts you as a foreigner. It is true that the
cultures are different but no one is counting you as a foreigner in Iran at
least.
Giti’s life in Britain as a foreigner feeds into the above narrative. Only a
few weeks after the 2009 presidential elections in Iran, the entire country
was in chaos. Some said that a revolution was about to happen. There
148 M. Fathi
were lots of arrests and some people went missing after the demonstra-
tions against the allegedly rigged elections. Many of the participants in
the first study did not talk about these political upheavals due to fears
of their words being recorded and used against them later on. When
Giti states that ‘whatever happens we [get] upset’, she is expressing her
feelings about the protests and arrests that occurred in Iran a few weeks
prior to the interview but she does not specify explicitly what she is talk-
ing about. During this period, Iran was not considered a safe and secure
country, but Giti contrarily suggests that ‘life is more secure in Iran’. Her
statement about life being more ‘secure’ refers to her sense of belong-
ing to Iran. Being a British citizen, Giti draws attention to the difference
between her sense of belonging and the politics of belonging that Yuval-
Davis (2006a) discusses. It is interesting that in the next section, Giti
separates herself from Englisi (English) people in showing her sense of
unbelonging to them. Her concept of foreignness is constructed around
her notion of unbelonging.
Mastoureh: Can you give me an example about your feeling of being a

foreigner?
Giti: For example, the language. The language you are speaking is not
your own language. You are not comfortable. You can’t say whatever you
want to say. Or their culture; in the workplace you see many strange peo-
ple. These English people, what I see of them is that they don’t work, they
are lazy and are tricky people, they are politicians3 and are liars. This is my
perception. A bunch of lazy people.
Giti’s feeling of foreignness is constructed by her disconnection with the

environment in which she is living and working. Her sense of exclusion
comes from a hierarchically classed understanding of her being dissimilar
to how she sees Englisi people. The above extracts are important because
they show how Giti regards Britain as a place where she is accepted on
the basis of her profession, i.e. being a respectable doctor, but not as a
Muslim migrant, which has a negative connotation within the current
political debates in Europe. Similarly, Nagel (2002) has pointed out in
his work that Muslim migrants try to divert the interview discussion
away from the issue of foreignness, which revolves around race or eth-
nicity, and towards their professions. The complexity of the narratives
around foreignness points to issues of belonging and unbelonging and
is important as it shows that migrants are fully aware of everyday racism
and can assess what positioning is more acceptable in a given context.

They take these positions in order to express their belongingness to cer-
tain contexts. Monir told me how she felt about being an Iranian and
living in Britain.
Monir: Err, erm, well… err, in any case, it feels good, especially because
I am a doctor. I feel there are fewer racist issues [because I am a doctor],
and things like that. I mean, it [my profession] boosts your reputation.
In the above extract, I intentionally refrained from asking about her posi-
tion as a doctor. The important thing for me was to find out the extent
to which these women saw themselves in relation to their country of set-
tlement. As is clear from the above quotation, Monir’s ‘Iranianness’ is
intersected with her profession and her class. Monir believes that there
is less racism towards her because she is a doctor. On the one hand, she
knows that she is marginalised as an Iranian in the British hegemonic
society, but on the other hand this does not manifest itself at first in her
narrative; what comes first is a good feeling because she is a doctor.
In narrative form, the diversion from nationality and/or ethnicity to
profession is important because it shows how she frames her story to
suit how she presents herself to me. What secures her place as a migrant
in British society is her profession, which enables her to be independ-
ent and gives her a sense of reputation. Although the question is not
about class and profession, she directly links her feelings about being
an Iranian in the UK to her professional experiences. Through the pro-
cesses of accreditation and registration, feelings of foreignness manifest
more in migrants’ narratives because they are constantly reminded that
they belong somewhere else, that their credentials need to be approved
and that they need to acquire official recognition. These stories are full
of elements that show a lack of power and alienation. Migrants’ stories
feature more of the importance of their profession and contribution to
society when set prior to the registration and accreditation stages, as
compared to stories set afterwards, an example being Roxana’s narration
just after beginning her work as a physician.
Roxana: At work, both consultants and colleagues really hurt me. They
behaved badly towards me and I was thinking that they were doing this
to me because I was a foreigner but now I think that it was partly because
I was new to the system here and did not know their routines. I was
150 M. Fathi
thinking all the time that I needed to learn something but they were think-
ing that I would already know how everything worked. So their percep-
tions and expectations were different to mine. These were two different
things. So, their behaviour was rude and was very bad and I really hated
them, but later on this issue diminished and everything got better.
In the above extract, the change in Roxana’s perspective between the

time she had just started her job and the time of the interview, when
she was a senior doctor, is noticeable. In Roxana’s story, the situatedness
of different people shows how her colleagues did not have the expecta-
tions that she had. Roxana’s integration into society and her professional
promotion have changed her reading of how her colleagues treated her
when she started working as a doctor in the UK. Initially it had seemed
to her that they were discriminating against her as a foreigner, but later
she believed it was more due to her lack of professional knowledge. It is
interesting how her narrative justifies her being hurt. She tries to take an
objective approach in looking back and showing that it was she who did
not know the system well and not due to her colleagues perhaps treating
her judgementally.
Issues around security and the sense of belonging to a certain group-
ing are related to the different historical periods in a person’s life. What
is evident from the above passage is that these women’s Iranian origin
does not give them the same reputation they receive from their occupa-
tions. For example Solmaz responded:
Mastoureh: How do you feel as an Iranian?
Solmaz: Could it be worse? [than being an Iranian] (giggling)
Profession and race are concepts used to indicate hierarchical belonging;

in other words, the sense of condemnation felt by being seen as a for-
eigner is indicative of how belonging is affected by the discourses of race
as well as profession. This is evident in the extract below.
Monir: […] in your workplace, because you are a doctor, the person-
nel, although they are English, they have to obey you, they have to listen
to you, you know… and then I feel that because of my job I can be like
English people, I can connect with them and can establish a relationship
with them. I never feel that I am inferior or that I am overshadowed by
them.
Monir is referring to how her job has enabled her to interact with the
English on an ‘equal’ level. I mentioned before that the category
‘Englisi’ (the English) is used to refer to the British white middle class. It
is clear from her narrative that it is her profession and, more importantly,
the way in which she sees her social class that are the tools that enable
her to have a voice and a stance in the marginal position she holds as an
Iranian. This is a delicate issue for the Iranians in this study because these
migrant women work in predominantly ‘white’ middle class environ-
ments such as hospitals, universities and clinics; thus, comparing them-
selves with the white English was a recurrent interplay of race and class
for them.
For example, the phrase ‘although they are English, they have to lis-
ten to me’ is extremely important in Monir’s narrative. It demonstrates
that migrants feel marginalised even when they are in a position of power
in another social axis such as class. What Monir is referring to highlights
the importance of translocational positionality and that, in certain con-
texts, positionalities are translocated. Her position as a doctor is inter-
sected with her Iranian heritage and thus makes her identify more in
relation to her occupation than her nationality, although this may not be
the case in another location, i.e. inside Iran. Monir also talks about the
belonging and unbelonging to which Christensen (2008) refers. Monir
shows that as a result of her belonging to her profession, English people
‘have to’ obey her. She shows her feelings of unbelonging by separat-
ing ‘the English’ into another category. As she expands on how she feels
empowered by her position, she uses a racial assimilatory tool to mark
herself as being similar to the English and having ‘English sensibilities’
(Nagel 2002); in other words, she uses language in a hierarchical sense
to convey that she is not ‘inferior’ to the English. Using a phrase such as
‘be like the English’ clearly shows that this racial hierarchy is present in
Monir’s mind. This constructs a narrative about the other, the foreigner
and the indigene in Monir’s story.
The women’s stories about their earlier periods in Britain are differ-
ent to their stories about later times. In the early stories, they expressed
feelings of having fallen short in some way. When they originally came
to Britain they had to adapt to the new environment; in some cases,
they felt it was a culture shock. The concept of being or feeling like a
foreigner was generally more significant in these narratives than being a
British person. It is a category that delineates a specific social location
(one of the facets of belonging that Yuval-Davis (2006a) defines) that
152 M. Fathi
these women were not familiar with before coming to the UK—none
was seen as a foreigner. In the later stories, however, the tone changed
to one of superiority, class and success. Phrases used in the earlier stories
included:
‘Falling from the top to the bottom’ (Farnaz)

‘Starting from point zero’ (Monir)
‘It was like an earthquake in my life’ (Maryam)
‘They never accepted my qualifications’ (Khorshid)
‘They put you down at the bottom of the list’ (Setareh and Khorshid)
These are in contrast with the phrases they used later when they were
registered doctors, such as:
‘I don’t feel inferior to the English’ (Monir)

‘I am living at a good level of society’ (Monir)
‘We are middle class [by] English standards’ (Maryam)
‘I am a global citizen’ (Shirin)
These two sets of narratives show how feelings of unbelonging in a

context are replaced by feelings of belonging in the same setting. I do
not, however, mean that the form of belonging itself does not change,
although I will discuss this issue further later in this chapter.
7.1.1 Is There a Glass Ceiling in British Society?

Usually, the difficulties that these women had to go through in order
to become part of the workforce did not simply revolve around pass-
ing exams or having their first degrees accredited (degrees that were
accredited in Iran). The difficulties included the language barrier, rac-
ism, loneliness and, in particular, misrecognition. Skeggs argues that mis-
recognition is a product of power relations in which those who are seen
as not belonging in one way or another are excluded (Skeggs 2004). The
narratives of misrecognition suggest that these women are regarded as
foreigners in every way. Nina was reflective about this issue and expressed
how she felt about being seen as the other.
Nina: They don’t let you in. They don’t let you in. I mean, you are under
a glass ceiling. You see it, you see the top, but they won’t let you go up.
You can go and attend a party in the Royal College of X, ‘Hi. Hello,’ but it
finishes there, you know […].
Mastoureh: Do you mean that only the upper classes are like this, or any
English person?
Nina: Both, the ordinary and the upper class. You see it more with the
upper classes, though. … those who have backgrounds here, those who for
five or six generations have lived in this country.
In the above, Nina refers to the issue of misrecognition. Nina’s refer-

ral to the concept of a glass ceiling is indicative of misrecognition and
how she is part of an excluded group in British society, one of the ‘for-
eign doctors’. She suggests that although as a doctor she gets recogni-
tion officially through being a member of Royal College of Physicians,
for example, what she faces in meeting her colleagues within profes-
sional networks and in her daily life is the absence of power in recogni-
tion: a position in which you are not recognised within the micro-politics
of your daily life. Nina specifically points to the hidden discrimination
against foreign doctors, who are not only held under a glass ceiling
but are also reminded that they do not belong. As shown in the above
extract, the stories of racism and exclusion are reflective and are usu-
ally about reflective feelings as well as actual experiences. Yuval-Davis
(2006a) argues that in the process of belonging, identifications do not
happen in vacuum; they are related to personal attachments as well as to
the social locations defined and recognised by society. Both the internal-
ised feelings of being inferior and the exterior exposures to the difficul-
ties of life in the West as a migrant are components of these stories. In
Nina’s quotation above, she repeatedly expresses her anxiety about not
being recognised as an English person. She talks in detail about the glass
ceiling in British society and discusses roots and the importance of hav-
ing a heritage in this country by becoming a member of the middle class.
Unlike Monir, who views medicine as a tool for integration, Nina’s sense
of foreignness is not reconciled with her profession and she sees becom-
ing a member of British society as more complicated and hierarchical.
Like Nina, Giti also refers to this racial glass ceiling.
Giti: My social class is middle class. It [my class] cannot go higher because
you cannot enter the system of English people. Here they have a class sys-
tem for themselves, which I don’t like to enter. So my class stays middle
154 M. Fathi
class. I am socialising with good Iranians who are good people and I am
happy, which is normal. Unfortunately, you don’t have as much choice
here as you do in Iran because Iranian society here is very limited. But
there is no other way.
Here, Giti expresses clearly that she cannot see herself included in
English people’s circles. She finds herself more included within a net-
work of ‘good Iranians’ and sees this as ‘normal’ because she views her-
self as being a member of a good Iranian community. Giti’s expression
is important in understanding how migrants make sense of the exact
social networks they think they have access to and those from which they
feel they are excluded. Nina and Giti’s narratives of not being included
in what they term as ‘the English people’ demonstrate their feelings of
uncertainty throughout the interview. They are well aware of the hier-
archies of race and how they are not positioned in a privileged loca-
tion within this hierarchy. Although their positionalities as doctors and
dentists allow them a sense of identity, this translocation of privilege in
terms of class but not of race and ethnicity shapes their narratives of not
belonging. In contrast, some women, like Monir and Niloufar, argue
that it is possible to belong to Britain.
7.1.2 ‘I Make Here My Soil. I Make Here My Country4’

Niloufar’s story was different to the others in terms of belonging. She
voluntarily mentioned that she came as a refugee.5 I shall highlight
two important points in Niloufar’s life that are relevant to her sense of
belonging: firstly, her fragile refugee status, which juxtaposed with the
previous position she had in Iran as an associate professor; and, secondly,
her marriage to an Englishman.
Her experience of being a refugee and marrying someone who
belonged here stopped her from feeling alienated. She embraced Britain
and called it her ‘home’, partly because she knew she could not go
back to Iran permanently or temporarily. It was interesting that despite
her strong comments about home, diaspora, her family and her hopes
for the future, among others, she found the word ta’alogh (belonging)
irrelevant.
Niloufar: [in a dismissive tone] What does ta’alogh [belonging] mean?…

Belonging is something about the past. I always think that if we were
supposed to think about the past, God would create us with two eyes
at the back of our heads. But God has given us two eyes in the front in
order to look forward to what [will come] in the future. So, what is in
front exists here. So, I make here my soil. I make here my country. I live
comfortably. If I want to think about the past, it holds me back. To think
about the past, keeps you backward. I want to go forward and I have three
kids and I am responsible for them.
Niloufar’s understanding of the word ta’alogh (belonging) as relating

to the past connects with her life as a refugee who cannot go back to
Iran; however, while she does not refer to belonging directly and dis-
misses belonging to her homeland, the whole extract is about belong-
ing. She wants to create a belonging for herself in Britain, where she has
decided to make a home. The power of such a narrative lies in the fact
that Niloufar is creating belonging through calling Britain her soil or
country. Savage (2008), in his research on migrants in areas surround-
ing Manchester, discusses a concept of belonging that he calls ‘elective
belonging’, an orientation towards place amongst the middle classes.
Savage argues that geographical spaces are important in a person’s
sense of belonging, in a way that individuals actively choose places to
which they already assume they would belong. In a similar way, Niloufar
expresses belonging to a space but, in her case, belonging is more
forced than voluntary or elective. Unlike Nina, who thinks that having
a generational history and background in a country creates belonging,
or Monir, who thinks that belonging is encapsulated in her profession,
Niloufar sees belonging in home-making. Niloufar’s ‘homing desire’ and
belonging may stem from her motherly duties in raising her children and
creating a homely atmosphere for them. Belonging to Britain for these
women is related to multiple issues such as their profession, homing
desire and social class. For example, I asked Shirin how she felt about her
social class in Britain.
Mastoureh: What do you think about being Iranian and your social class in
Britain?
Shirin: I don’t know about the social classes in Britain. … I am middle

class, I think. Erm, I think I am a middle class person who has a brighter
horizon in front of her than what it is now at the moment, and maybe in
the future I will become an upper class person.
156 M. Fathi
Mastoureh: What do you mean by upper class?
Shirin: I mean upper class financially. We are already part of the upper classes
education-wise, if not upper middle. I don’t know their terms or things
like how many educated people they have. Well, we do not get to see the
upper upper classes. Is that correct? Those who go to special schools and all
become barristers and ministers. Leaving them aside, those are the elite.
I am comparing us with the rest. We are upper class in terms of educa-
tion because I don’t find English people going after education. It is more
foreigners who go after education. Especially if you look at subjects [that
require] more effort, you will see that their heads [hair] are all black. And,
erm, … I think we are middle class financially…but we [can] become upper
class [in the future].
It is interesting to note how the concept of class for Shirin is tied to

the notion of homing desire. She has different understandings of the
notion of middle class and upper class. One thing that she is clear
about is that there is no glass ceiling for her and her family, because
she believes that they are socially mobile. In fact, in the above quota-
tion she does not refer to her experiences of being Iranian because
she believes that she is already living as a middle- and upper-class
member of society.
Individuals’ decisions to settle down in a geographical location
should be read in terms of their translocational positionality. In other
words, professional migrant women occupy contradictory positions
as refugees and/or migrants, doctors, academics, women, Iranians,
mothers and so on. These multiple and intersecting identities create
in them a complex sense of belonging that cannot be taken as purely
elective within UK society. Translocational belonging (Anthias 2008),
featured in these narratives, refers to the sense of belonging that is
not focused on geographical territories but instead relates to the fluid-
ity of social locations (such as class and gender) and their transition
after migration, which can only be identified through migrants’ nar-
ratives; otherwise, subjectively, there is no other way to understand
these nuanced changes in one’s life. Farnaz, a young GP who has
been successful in buying a large share of her surgery, refers to her
sense of belonging and her ‘Iranianness’ as ‘neutral’ feelings. In the
following narrative, translocational belonging is shown in a complex
way.
Farnaz: I don’t have a special feeling because I am Iranian, and [don’t

know] whether it should be good or bad. I am just a person who has
come from somewhere else. And I have never had any problems in terms
of being a foreigner. Never. Never. I don’t know whether it is because of
what I have studied or because I am with people who… are English but
are working for me. So they can’t say anything to me. I don’t know what
would have happened if it had been the other way around. That is a very
different situation. I think being a doctor has helped me to be part of a
class in society where people respect me more. It makes a difference, a
huge difference. I am sure.
Farnaz, as was argued in the previous chapter, had a darker complex-

ion than the other women and because of this she says she is often
mistaken for being Pakistani or Indian. In the interview, she earlier
referred to the issue of how her features made a difference to how
she saw herself and how she felt she belonged to British society. In
the above extract, however, she is comparing herself to the English
people who work for her in her surgery, such as her administrative
staff and nursing team. It is particularly significant to note Farnaz’s
situatedness, because now she feels much more integrated into society
than she was before, when she complained about being discriminated
against. The above passage shows how her racial identity has been
replaced by a professional identity and how the feelings of foreign-
ness and inferiority that she narrated previously have been replaced
by feelings of superiority. Farnaz’s stories about not being subjected
to racism are naturalised in the context on which she is focusing,
namely her relationship with English people at her workplace. Yuval-
Davis (2003) argues that belonging tends to become naturalised and
thus invisible in hegemonic formations. It is only when one’s safe
and stable connection to the collectivity, the homeland or the state
becomes threatened that belonging becomes articulated and reflex-
ive rather than just performative. Farnaz’s belonging becomes reflex-
ive when I ask her a question about her social class. In the following
example, the turning point in Farnaz’s narrative is when her belong-
ing becomes reflexive in relation to class, which creates translocational
belonging.
Mastoureh: Do you think that if you were not a doctor your life would be
any different?
158 M. Fathi
Farnaz: Yes, if I were not in this [position], erm, I mean, for me as an

Iranian, it made a difference. 12 years ago, you cannot imagine how many
CVs I sent to different employers. I am not lying. And nobody would give
me any job and it was an Iranian person who did eventually.
Farnaz’s attempts to get a job and her continuous rejections ended in

her being given an opportunity by a doctor who shared the same cultural
background. Are these two narratives not in contrast with each other?
For Farnaz, the meaning of foreignness has become less significant (as
shown in the previous extract) because she is now recognised as a doc-
tor and is talking from a position of power. Farnaz’s meaning of belong-
ing changes within the narrative several times, because her belonging is
translocated and shifts when her positioning changes throughout the
conversation.
In 2005, the Commission for Racial Equality published a project
report on citizenship, belonging and Britishness (ETHNOS 2005). It
argued that the concept of citizenship for ethnic minorities was strongly
associated with having a UK passport, while the concept of citizenship
among white English participants of this research was associated with
being a member of a nation or society to which one feels belonging. This
point is important; for migrants, possessing a British passport changes
their quality of life and gives them more mobility. Becoming a natural-
ised British citizen, however, does not necessarily mean one’s sense of
belonging increases.
Through these narratives, one can see how race and class are inter-
sected in the lives of skilled migrants who do or do not feel belonging to
Britain, although all bar four (Solmaz, Shirin, Azadeh and Stareh) were
British citizens. This is what makes these women’s positionings contra-
dictory. Being a foreigner had less significance for these women after
they became powerful subjects, i.e. registered doctors and British citi-
zens. This issue leads us to the concept of ‘othering’ other ethnicities as a
process of self-identification.
7.2 ‘Others’ and the Hierarchies of Belonging

Intersectionality is a useful framework in which the processes that create
inequalities can be understood (Anthias 2009; Collins and Bilge 2016),
but it provides an angle that could not have been explored using only
feminist or Marxist analyses of social class. The processes that show how
Iranian women’s understanding of the ‘other’ is shaped vis-à-vis the
‘English’ are much too complicated to be understood solely through
binary positions because these positionings intersect race, gender, sexual-
ity, religion and more. As Back et al. (2012) argue, the new hierarchies
of belonging now work in a globalised and neo-liberal context which
include a variety of social positionings and move beyond the discourses
of race. The characterisation of different groupings in relation to one
reference group is important in understanding racial class and classed
race in these stories. I argue that having a connection to white English
middle-class people is seen as a cultural, economic and political source
of empowerment for some of these women: a colonial vision that has
existed in Iranian culture for centuries (Asayesh 2006).
As I discussed previously, the migrants’ narratives are marked with
multi-layered belonging. This is not just about a geographical location
or a homeland; belonging can manifest through social locations, in rep-
resentation and identification, and in normative systems (Yuval-Davis
2006a). Giti, a dentist who lived in an affluent neighbourhood, answered
my question about her feelings on being an Iranian and living in Britain
in this way.
Giti: I think [that] because there are a lot of Iranians in Britain you do not
have a strange feeling. [I] would prefer to be in [my] own country but I
don’t have a bad feeling. I am not ashamed of it.
Mastoureh: Hmm, do you think other people are ashamed of [their

ethnicity]?
Giti: For example, imagine if you are from Afghanistan: it is worse.

Of course, they [the English] are ignorant people. I mean, I always say
proudly that I am Iranian but others are ashamed of it. Other nationalities,
I mean. For example, if you are black, in our [Iranian] point of view, it is
worse. Because we don’t see those races [in Iran].
Mastoureh: Why do you think Afghans feel that way?
Giti: Because all Afghans always want to say, ‘We are Iranians’. Because in
their country there has always been war, and it has a bad reputation. While
there has been no news about our country until recently6 and many people
know it as a good country.
160 M. Fathi
It is interesting how the ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ of a country or

community are embedded in the ways in which the country or the
grouping is portrayed in the Western media, and such imaginaries
are readily applied by migrants. By giving examples about Afghans,
Iranians and black people, Giti touches on an important issue about
the hierarchies of belonging. These hierarchies do not automati-
cally exist within hegemonic society. They are created historically
through colonial and imperial discourses and within contemporary
times through policies and projects that address safety and security by
scrutinising asylum seekers and refugees as a defence against terror-
ism (Fekete and Sivanandan 2009). As such, hierarchies of belonging
are constantly reproduced to locate marginalised separately from the
advantaged.
From the above conversation, it is apparent how other groupings are
lumped into ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ categories. As Giti argues above
in the final line, good and bad countries, to a great degree, export ‘good’
and ‘bad’ citizens to Western countries. She argues that Afghanistan,
where there has been war and poverty, cannot be considered a good
country.
More importantly, the way she constructs the belonging of Afghans
suggests that one can feel belonging to a supposedly higher group-
ing in the hierarchies of belonging. From her point of view, Afghans
do not feel belonging to Afghanistan; instead, they feel belonging
to Iran. For Giti, ‘Iranianness’ is constructed with a sense of supe-
riority. As an Iranian, she feels proud, especially when she compares
herself and Iran to somewhere economically and politically more
unstable than Iran. Although she knows that recently Iran has also
been stigmatised in mainstream British society, she wants to compare
it to a country where she thinks the citizens are more vulnerable than
Iranians and, as such, feel more shame in belonging to their particular
national and collective identity. Giti’s argument about others’ desire
to be Iranian is similar to Setareh’s characterisation of Arabs. In the
following quote, Setareh compares Iranian and Arab doctors who
work in hospitals.
Setareh: Iranians are more successful. What I have seen of Iranian consult-
ants is that in terms of knowledge and job they are not any different to the
Englisi [English] people. They are good doctors. Because of this, I have
heard little, I mean, I haven’t heard at all, of course, I haven’t seen a lot,
but the four or five Iranian consultants that I know, I haven’t heard bad
things about them; for example, I have heard bad things about Arab peo-
ple. Things like, ‘That person is an Arab, leave him alone’. Erm, if a person
is discriminating between men and women, they say, ‘He is an Arab and
that’s why he is doing that. It is his culture’. But I have not seen this about
Iranians. I haven’t heard it. Iranians are good.
It is clear from the two examples above that Iranians are compared with
the English to show that they are ‘like’ English people or that they are as
good as English people. In contrast with this picture of Iranians, there
are other groups such as Afghans or Arabs that are presented as an alter-
native. Giti, for example, wants to show that she, unlike Afghans, does
not feel ashamed of being Iranian in the West because, like Setareh, she
thinks that Iranians are well integrated and are ‘good’ citizens. In these
narratives, there is a construction of non-Iranians as being less reputable.
There is an inherent sense of shame and pride associated with belonging
to certain nationalities, a point that is taken up in the next section on
‘deserving’ to belong.
7.2.1 ‘Deserving’ to Belong

I discussed the discourse of deserving in the previous chapter. Here, I am
focusing on the class and belonging aspect of deserving whilst before it
was about the racialisation of the whole debate about ‘earned citizenship’
and ‘deserving migrants’. Working in prestigious positions in both the
public and private sectors in the UK placed these women in the position
of being recognised by society; as such, they experienced power in recog-
nition. In other words, they are officially recognised as ‘members’ of one
or more institutions. This sense of affiliation gives members of a group,
validity and a sense of self and inclusion within the social relations of a
given society (Bourdieu 1993) or within a particular grouping. We need
to think that society, our community and our family need us. This issue
around others ‘needing’ us was particularly evident from the narratives of
these women, who all worked as service-providers, a point that was used
to express issues around deserving.
Giti’s assumption was that Iranians ‘deserve’ to be British citizens
more than other nationalities. The sense of security Giti obtains from
162 M. Fathi
making the above statement about Afghans and black people comes
from the hegemonic discourses about migrants that are prevalent in
British society. Roya refers to the hierarchies of belonging of different
ethnicities by comparing Iranian and English people in the following
quotation.
Mastoureh: What do you feel as an Iranian woman here?
Roya: It definitely has affected me. Because you are a foreigner in the
eyes of these people who have a limited view, erm, in a way, in this coun-
try, they prefer the English [over] you. In some issues, I think it is the
case. Erm, some people say that if something happens between me and an
English person and then the police and a court case is involved, they [will]
support the English person, they are not just. Thank God, it has not hap-
pened to me so far, erm, but it exists. I know that it exists.
Roya is even more direct about her position in a Western society where
she clearly places herself within a higher stratum.
Roya: In Scandinavia,7 we did not have this gossiping that is going on

in Britain. We did not have lying. If you went to the police and said this
and this happened to me, a policeman would never ask you to go and
get a document to prove it. He would believe you. Of course, now it has
changed because the foreigners have ruined everything (she smiles). But if
20 years ago you went to the police and said, for example, ‘I have lost my
passport and I need a new one’, they did not ask ‘where you lost it’, ‘why
you have lost it’ [or order you to] ‘go and search for it’. They would say,
‘OK’. You filled in a form and they gave you a new one. But now it is not
like this, everything is ruined now.
In the above example, Roya is separating herself from other foreigners

by placing herself as ‘we’. She refers to herself and those like her who
are part of society, and places others outside that society. She sees for-
eigners as those who caused the problems in the Scandinavian country
but sees herself in contrast to those she describes as foreigners. Yuval-
Davis (2010) argues that identity is formed in the construction of the
categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’, within the constellations of groups whose
identities are formed in saying who they are not. It is about being or
feeling part of or having distanced from the other one. This is exactly
what is demonstrated in Roya’s narrative. Her sense of attachment
comes from the fact that she sees herself as deserving of belonging to the
Scandinavian country and others as not deserving this because they spent
their childhood elsewhere.
Roya’s argument about deserving to belong to a Western society
may be related to her being a child when she migrated to the West;
however, from a wider perspective, Roya’s statements about deserving
to belong and hierarchies of belonging are similar to the other wom-
en’s statements, even though they did not spend their childhood in the
West.
Giti has a clear understanding of where she stands in this hierarchy
and is able to draw boundaries between herself as an Iranian and oth-
ers. An Afghan positioning in Iran is not granted the authority, integ-
rity and legitimacy of an Iranian citizen. Afghans (usually as refugees) are
hardworking people who do not manage to become Iranian citizens even
after more than thirty years of living in the country. Interestingly, the
same representations and assumptions about Afghans’ rights to citizen-
ship and whether or not they ‘deserve’ to become Iranian citizens have
been a subject of discussion amongst politicians in Iran. The same argu-
ments are carried into British society and hold similar validation in the
new context for Giti.
Giti’s translocational belonging, the one that changes constantly in
Iran and Britain, is dependent on her seeing her ‘Iranianness’ as supe-
rior to ‘Afghanness’; however, the hierarchy of belonging that she dis-
cusses in relation to ethnic groupings does not include her because she is
a professional and so is not only shaped by race and ethnicity but is also
intersected by class and profession. The boundaries she draws between
those who belong and those who do not are in terms of a distinction
between professional migrants and unprofessional migrants, an impor-
tant point that has been discussed by others (Andreouli 2013; Andreouli
and Dashtipour 2014). This is because being a professional is given more
weight in society, it legitimises her presence in British society and proves
perhaps her innocence, a claim of not being a terrorist, as Niloufar put
it. For Giti, being a dentist also indicates a classed life. The quotation
below clearly suggests her understanding of translocational class and its
fluid boundaries.
Mastoureh: Now that you are living here, what are your feelings about
being an Iranian? I mean, what you said about Afghanistan and that there
164 M. Fathi
has always been a war, and you mentioned that Iran did, until recently, not
have a bad reputation. But now Iran does have a bad reputation.
Giti: It has a bad reputation, but imagine, have you ever seen an Afghan
professional?
Mastoureh: Yes, I have. (Silence)
Giti: Oh well, you have, but I haven’t. But there are lots of Iranians
who have professional jobs. There are lots of good ones who are
INTEGRATED into society.
I specifically asked her about her feelings on being an Iranian at a time

when Iran’s reputation was queried. Ignoring the question, her answer
was framed around Afghans. The reason Giti asked whether or not I had
seen a professional Afghan might be due to her lack of interaction with
professionals from different backgrounds. It also refers to the issue of
recognition discussed before. As Afghans are not able to become pro-
fessionals, because most of them are not granted Iranian citizenship,
the diversity amongst Afghans remains unrecognised by the hegemonic
Iranian society. Giti’s friends were mostly Iranian as far as I knew; there-
fore, for her, middle-class Iranians could be a ‘good’ example of ‘inte-
grated’ people in British society, while Afghans could not.
The formation of good and bad citizens in Giti’s, Roya’s and Setareh’s
narratives are indicative of several issues. Firstly, not every migrant is seen
as equal to white European citizens; there is always a danger of being the
Other (Hage 1998). This is because there are two categories of migrants:
those who deserve to belong and those who do not; but in a neo-lib-
eral system this is deservingness is defined by the market (Andreolui
and Dashtipour 2014). This characterisation is important because, as I
argued at the beginning of this chapter, placing oneself alongside the
English bestows a powerful positioning to some of these women, in a
similar way to their position as doctors.
Secondly, nationalist and racist discourses about Arabs or Afghans or,
in a more general sense in Roya’s story, foreigners, stem from the ways
in which Afghans, Arabs or black people are portrayed in Iran. Class and
assimilation are constructed within such discourses when one refers to
migrants, refugees, national identity and so on. Assimilation and integra-
tion processes are seen as classed acts that not everyone has the ability
to perform. This is presented in Giti’s differentiation between good and
bad citizens, in Roya’s differentiation between ‘we’ and ‘foreigners’ and

in Setareh’s characterisation of Arab and Iranian doctors. The ‘methodo-
logical nationalism’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) that they use in
order to define Afghans, Arabs and foreigners, assumes these countries
of origin to be nation-states where individuals are formed differently to
Iranians and, hence, that these people are naturally incapable of being
like Iranians and being equal to the English.
7.3 Conclusion
In these women’s narratives, the medical profession was often considered
important in imparting a sense of attachment to British society because
it created a safe environment free from abuse, racism or sour experi-
ences. The power these migrants attained through being recognised as
British citizens was a result of their social class as doctors, not as Iranians
or Muslims. Professions provide the means to overcome their problems
with residency and citizenship. Their class and their foreignness are inter-
sected in a mutually constitutive way. On the one hand, they are aware
of being an outsider; their sense of belongingness is affected by this con-
stant feeling of foreignness. At the same time, however, they compare
themselves to others in terms of whether or not they deserve to belong.
This is where it can be seen that one’s sense of belonging is intersected
with class: they use their profession as a testimony to show that they
deserve more than others to belong to British society. I have discussed
how the hierarchies of belonging were, to a great extent, related to the
hierarches of profession, with the medical profession being rated highest.
Although I asked them about belonging in terms of geographical spaces,
their answers involved various other things like food, furniture, places
and jobs; all had one focus in common, though, and that was their pro-
fessional belonging.
On the one hand, experiences of diaspora and translocational class
(a dislocated social class in a new context) created a difficult position in
terms of class misrecognition for these women, especially when they first
arrived in Britain. On the other hand, the participants are situated in sys-
tems of social locations and inequalities, as shown in their various nar-
ratives on integrating into British society. For these women, foreignness
is constructed in relation to other social groups from non-Iranian back-
grounds such as Afghans, Indians or black people, as well as non-profes-
sional Iranian migrants. All of these women have, at some point in their
166 M. Fathi
lives, experienced discrimination to one degree or another. When placed

in a powerful position, they enjoy exercising that power.
In the last part of this chapter, I discussed how women’s positions as
doctors and dentists protect them from their ambivalent feelings about
their Iranian identity. Their belonging relates not only to their geograph-
ical location but also to their profession, education, race and ethnicity. I
argue that translocational belonging goes beyond geographical bounda-
ries and changes within identity narratives. It is especially useful for the
analysis of skilled migrants in Western societies where they are recognised
on the basis of their profession and professional identities. The belong-
ing of skilled migrants becomes translocational because it changes con-
stantly according to the context and the historical time in which they are
located. Whilst citizenship in a geographical location or space is related
to these women’s sense of belonging, professional belonging is related to
making a home on the basis of one’s networks.
Notes
1. One of the most famous political speeches about belonging was deliv-
ered by David Cameron (2011), the then prime minister of the UK, who
criticised state multiculturalism at a security conference in Munich on 5
February 2011 and called for a new form of belonging. He said, ‘freedom
of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights,
regardless of race, sex or sexuality, this is what defines us as a society. To
belong here is to believe in these things’. More recently, in post-2016
referendum British society, the sense of belonging both at individual and
national level (belonging to Britain and belonging to Europe) is being dis-
cussed more in public spaces. See http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/
pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/.
2. Iranians have become the subject of much media coverage after Donald
Trump, in February 2017, banned citizens of Iran, alongside six other coun-
tries to enter the USA without having legitimate ties to the American soci-
ety. Although during Obama administration, non-Iranian nationals who had
travelled to Iran in the past were required to obtain a visa to enter the USA.
3. In Iran, the word ‘politician’ is used colloquially as shorthand to describe
those who are deceitful and manipulative.
4. This section and some others in this chapter have been published as a
paper in the Journal of Political Psychology (2015).
5. There are few Iranians who express whether they came as refugees or not.
This may be due to the stigmatisation of refugees in the Western world.
Aidani (2010) found that Iranians in Australia think of the word ‘refugee’
as one that carries a lower status.
6. By ‘recently’ she is referring to the disputed presidential elections in 2009,
when many people demonstrated against the results. The news was broad-
cast all over the world.
7. Because of confidentiality issues, I cannot name the country in which Roya
lived during her childhood.
References
Anthias, F. (2009). Translocational belonging, identity and generation:
Questions and problems in migration and ethnic studies. Finnish Journal of
Ethnicity and Migration, 4(1), 5–15.
Andreouli, E. (2013). Identity and acculturation: The case of naturalised citizens
in Britain. Culture & Psychology 19 (2): 165–183.
Andreouli, E., & Dashtipour, P. (2014). British Citizenship and the ‘Other’:
An Analysis of the Earned Citizenship Discourse. Journal of Community and
Applied Social Psychology 24:100–110.
Aidani, M. (2010). Existential accounts of Iranian displacement and the cultural
meanings of categories. Journal of Intercultural Studies 31(2): 121–143.
Asayesh, G. (2006). I grew up thinking I was white. In A. Zanganeh (Ed.), My
sister, guard your veil; my brother, guard your eyes: Uncensored Iranian voices.
Boston: Beacon Press.
Back, L., Shamser, S., & Charlynne, B. (2012). New hierarchies of belonging.
European Journal of Cultural Studies 15 (2):139–154.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature.
Columbia University Press.
Christensen, A.-D. (2008). Belonging and unbelonging in an intersectional
perspective. The Third Sino-Nordic Women and Gender Studies Conference,
Kumning, China.
ETHNOS. (2005). Citizenship and belonging: What is Britishness? London:
Commission for Racial Equality. See: ethnos.co.uk/what_is_britishness_CRE.
pdf.
Fekete and Sivanandan (2009). A suitable enemy: Racism, migration and
Islamophobia in Europe. London: Pluto Press
168 M. Fathi
Nagel, C. (2002). Constructing difference and sameness: The politics of assimi-

lation in London’s Arab communities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 52(2),
258–287.
Savage, M. (2008). Histories, belongings, communities. International Journal of
Research Methodology, 11(2), 151–162.
Wemyss, G. (2009). The invisible empire: White discourse, tolerance and belonging.
Farnham: Ashgate.
Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and
beyond: Nation state building, migration and the social sciences. Global
Networks, 2(4), 301–334.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2003). Belonging: From the indigene to the diasporic. In
U. Ozkirimli (Ed.), Nationalism and its futures (pp. 127–144). Basingstoke:
Macmillan.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006a). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of
Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006b). Intersectionality and feminist politics. European
Journal of Women’s Studies, Special Issue on Intersectionality, 13(3), 193–209.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2011). The politics of belonging: Intersectional contestations.
London: Sage.
CHAPTER 8
Understanding Class Intersectionally: A Way

Forward
When I started researching Iranian women migrants’ understanding of

social class, I visited an Iranian community centre in north London. I
met a woman who was working as a volunteer in the centre who, after
I introduced myself, invited me into her office for a short chat. Having
heard my topic of research, she asked me: ‘Is it really important that you
understand what Iranian women think about their class? Why don’t you
research more important issues such as the problems of refugees, ex-pris-
oners or domestic violence in Iranian families who live here?’ Her ideas
were brilliant, but I thought mine was equally important for the follow-
ing reasons.
This group of elite migrants about whom I wrote in this book, and
their perspectives, are generally absent from studies on the Iranian
diaspora (see Moghissi 2006) and particularly on migrants in Britain
(Gholami 2016; Spellman 2004). Research is a social relationship that
does not necessarily empower individuals but is a give-and-take process
between people with different positionalities. Also, our research, espe-
cially in the field of intersectionality, has been overwhelmingly about
marginal people; the treatment of privileged groups has been largely
disregarded, even within academic circles (Collins and Bilge 2016).
Understanding the lives of more privileged migrants such as the women
in this book is not only important but also necessary for an understand-
ing of the workings of power in creating positions of privilege and mar-
ginalisation: the inequalities of modern societies which presented in
a minority of others’ works (Levine-Rasky 2011). By counting these

170 M. Fathi
women as privileged, however, I do not mean that they do not face

discrimination and racism in their daily lives or that in some spheres of
their lives they are not among the minority and marginalised. Finally, by
thinking that social class is a secondary issue to matters such as torture or
domestic violence, we deprive ourselves of a deeper understanding about
how class impacts on people’s lives. It is essential to understand class
in order to understand the link between class and domestic violence,
imprisonment, torture, racism and so on.
8.1 Situated Understanding of Class

There are many unexplored paths to studying the classed identities of
Iranian women and I do not claim that this book provided a complete
picture of how educated Iranian women migrants make sense of class.
One of the lessons I learned in writing this book was that this text out-
lines only one specific way out of many possible ones to explore Iranian
women’s lives. These 22 women all struggle to avoid the stereotypical
image of Iranian women often seen as practising Muslims, subservient
women, oppressed migrants and uneducated homemakers. Over the past
few years, global politics, including the internal politics of the Iranian
regime and the politics of the Western countries where the majority of
the Iranian diaspora lives, have shaped the urgency of certain research
subjects, for example, violence against women, political pressure inside
Iran, refugees and their integration strategies and bordering.
My theoretical framework to address the complexities of Iranian
women migrants’ classed identities was inspired by various theories:
Anthias (1998, 2002, 2005, 2008), Bourdieu (1984, 1993), Brah (1996),
Butler (1999), Skeggs (1997a, 2004, 2005a, b) and Yuval-Davis (2006a,
b, 2011, 2015). In the analytical framework I presented in Chap. 2,
class was neither treated as a concrete concept nor as an empty position to
be filled. Class was understood as a concept with its own ontological basis
rooted in gender relations, racialisations, performances, place-making and
sense of belonging. In this treatment of class its construction was per-
ceived as a mutual constitution with other social locations, such as gender,
ethnicity, being a migrant and so on (Yuval-Davis 2010).
There are two important components of intersectional class: one is the
importance of power relations. Class comprises a set of power relations
that at certain historical times help to elevate people across social strata
8 UNDERSTANDING CLASS INTERSECTIONALLY: A WAY FORWARD 171
by creating networks, wealth and opportunities that lead to other forms

of capital. The women who are characterised in this book all enjoyed
such opportunities, networks and relative freedom for decision-making,
and were not tied to a patriarchal family system in Iran, a country which
bans women from migrating abroad alone. For example, they were active
in decision-making at home, researched about their children’s schools
and their choice of universities, placed their children in touch with
‘influential’ people such as MPs and university professors and facilitated
placement and voluntary work. These are the elements that make these
women privileged subjects (a privilege that was hereditary to an extent
and was developed and passed on to the next generation).
The second important component about classed identities, particu-
larly regarding the legitimacy of performance and deserving to belong,
is that these identities are constructed within relations that need to be
‘recognised’ by other people in a social field in order to become valid
and meaningful, always bearing in mind the local and global receptiv-
ity of class. For example, being able to successfully translate what middle
class means in a British context, as equivalent Iranian classed behaviours
do not make sense in a British context and vice versa. In this way, rec-
ognition and misrecognition became a temporal as well as a relational
element of class that made its recognition time- and location-based.
We know that migrants (including myself) need recognition in dif-
ferent stages in life and social milieux. Class loses its meaning without
being recognised by others, even if it is seen as a form of capital in other
places or times and by the person herself. As such, for migrants, facing
misrecognition in class terms will affect their sense of citizenship and
belonging, and this is where I draw on race and belonging in Chaps.
6 and 7. Perhaps the intersection of class and race and the importance
of belonging will become clearer by taking a look at a recent event in
British society, the UK referendum 2016.
8.2 Intersectionality and Class
The social class in its various strands that was discussed in this book is
heavily related to the notion of ‘recognition’ developed by Bourdieu and
Wacquant (1992), who contend that power works through ‘misrecog-
nition’. Migrants are easily misrecognised, perhaps because misrecogni-
tion of race/ethnicity and un/belonging happens at a much quicker pace
and is more verbally obvious than the misrecognition around social class
172 M. Fathi
membership that classical literature on class fails to analyse intersection-

ally. However, conflation of class and race perhaps happens in a more
complex way in the case of migrants occupying contradictory locations
such as migrant doctor, migrant academic or migrant entrepreneur com-
pared to a migrant person who is counted as ‘unskilled worker’. In the
latter case, the term migrant within the political and public discourses
already assumes a marginal and powerless position. For example, the
boundaries drawn between migrants (like anyone else) into dichotomies
of deserving and undeserving, proper and improper, best and the bright-
est versus the dependent and scroungers was the dominant narrative in
the 2016 referendum in the UK. Within this context, immigration from
‘within’ European Union became more central to nationalist discourses
that no claim, effort, practice or education was seen adequate in terms
of making claims of belonging to British society. As was discussed in this
book, gendered identities, place-making, performances, racial neutrality
are about making a claim of belonging authentic. In other words, the
different practices, identity narratives and values that migrants apply are
used to make oneself known, visible (sometime invisible) and to be taken
as a legitimate member of a social grouping.
Part of the recognition and misrecognition power comes from the
power to exclude certain groups, either in terms of gendered ‘we-ness’,
racialised ‘we-ness’, performative ‘we-ness’ and even geographical (ter-
ritorial) ‘we-ness’. The ‘Other’ as a category that does not share similari-
ties with ‘I’ ironically forms what constitutes ‘I’ in the sense that what is
not the Other is the ‘I’. Binary oppositions work well in creating dis-
tinction in its crudest way, e.g. in constructing political candidates in a
debate as different to each other and making one more desirable than
the other. The same technique, as we saw, happened in migrant narra-
tives of belonging, racialisation or even in narratives of pathways of
growing up. What makes maintenance of these boundaries difficult and
complex is, of course, their intersectional nature. For example a per-
son may be recognised as a doctor through passing exams and obtain-
ing the necessary registration identifications and documents from the
General Medical Council in the UK; however, when compared to a white
British doctor, as a black doctor, he/she may suffer because these dis-
tinctions come to the fore in reality, and those in the position of power
make decisions on the basis of binaries of ‘I’ and the Other. Being black,
having Muslim identity, being lesbian or disabled still work effectively
in prohibiting one from recognition (BBC 2017).1 Symbolic systems
of recognition are produced in different layers of everyday life, within

or in opposition to hegemonic discourses around deserving and unde-
serving that are constantly shifting. A good example of these shifting
discourses of recognition happened in the immediate days after the ref-
erendum on 23 June 2016. Up until 22 June, European non-British UK
residents were considered as part of British society. In a day, they lost
this collective recognition and were now occupying the ‘Other’ position
shared by non-European migrants and facing similar discrimination (see
Sigona 2016).2 Of course, the narratives around misrecognition were
built slowly and gradually in the political and public discourse that led
to the victory of the ‘Leave’ (Leave the European Union) campaign in
the UK; this was not a sudden change in society. However, in order for
one to be recognised within symbolic systems that allow the recognition
of certain capitals (here whiteness and Britishness) as authentic and true,
individuals need to be located along an axis of power in social groupings
that is often facilitated by policy-makers, law and social order, as Yuval-
Davis explicates in her theorisation of belonging and politics of belong-
ing (2006a). Within these systems, which attribute symbolic power to
particular practices, commodities, places and material manifestations of
class, certain kinds of bodies are fixated gradually or at times suddenly as
‘Them’, ‘the Other’ or ‘the inferior’.
We know that the processes of othering are most of the time hidden,
complex and inhumane. Some migrants are included in marginalised
groupings characterised as hypersexual, uneducated, manual workers, liv-
ing in densely populated areas or receiving state benefits. Such attribu-
tions classify, code and recognise migrants within a neoliberal system as
non-contributors and as a result ‘unworthy’. They are placed in a hierar-
chical relationship with those who are characterised as sexually discreet,
educated, professional and ‘worthy’ (Skeggs 2004).
Othering is used effectively in identification narratives. In this book,
different intersectional othering or boundary-maintenance narratives
were used to construct class position. Most of the women in this book
saw themselves as middle class through social mobility, translocational
mobility or by applying the Englishness imaginaries that are promoted as
integration policies in the UK. In these narratives, other migrants’ class
position was fixed and unchangeable. Such distinction in recognising
one’s own and others’ class makes it useful for the construction of differ-
ence. I showed this through pathways of growing-up (Chap. 3), through
place-making (Chap. 4), through performance as a doctor (Chap. 5),
174 M. Fathi
through superiority of their racial category (Chap. 6) and through

deservingness in belonging (Chap. 7). Appreciating the possibility of
change and mobility in other people’s lives would devalue the naturalisa-
tion and class inscription in one’s own life. The ‘othering’ in relation to
class is an outcome of the workings of different discourses that fix certain
identities to certain groupings and make them unchangeable and for ever
(see Bhabha 1994, emphasis mine). The point is that contexts change,
identities change, narratives of identities change. However fixity is used
to show the change (usually towards more positive attributes) that is
impossible for others.
Intersectionally, we have situated positioning and understanding in
terms of gender, class, sexuality, age, race, ethnicity and so on, but we
are involved in activities that are constructed meaningfully in relation
to those social locations, as we are when we tell stories. We construct
stories as much as we construct acts within the discourses to which we
have access, although we are not solely formed and constructed by our
cultures, as Benhabib (2007) argues. We make meanings differently for
different people because of our situatedness and the situatedness of our
audience. As such we are always in the process of translating our under-
standings either as a speaker or as a listener (Fathi 2013). Understanding
class is a product of such translations. How we understand class location
is related to our social relations in particular localities. How I understand
my position as a migrant and a newly British citizen changes gradually
throughout time and sometimes suddenly following societal changes
such as the one I explained above.
8.3 Social Locations, Relations and Localities

In this book, my aim has been to illustrate complicated, interrelated and
multiple layers that constitute a migrant’s social class. In the Marxist
approach to class, it is assumed that class positions and social relations in
a society are determined by people’s access to the means of production.
As such, Marx’s treatment of class assumes class positions to be filled in
by individuals with abstract exchangeable attributes. The problem with
such a structural approach to class, manifested also in Weber’s approach
to class in terms of market relations, is that a focus on structure is at the
expense of nuanced everyday life practices. The criticism of this approach
led to a wealth of research on classed experiences and narratives, imagi-
nations, desires, values and norms, which were then reduced to class
position in the final decades of the twentieth century through the works
of Bourdieu (1984) who defined class in relation to capital, power rela-
tions and recognition (Bottero 2005; Savage 2000).
What was discussed in this book went beyond the relations between
labour and capital or market relations defining one’s position. Instead,
other social locations were considered in their ontological basis in the
production of class in relation to a particular group of migrants. The
construction of gender here comprises the familial strategies of Iranian
families as well as strategies around motherhood and womanhood in the
UK. The processes of surveillance of educational pathways, normalisation
of middle-class routes that facilitate becoming a doctor and moralising
decisions, professions and life-chances are important in making oneself
distinct from others in terms of growing up as a middle-class woman.
Stemming from a patriarchal view towards controlling female subjects,
their educational ambitions and their lifestyles, these women were cre-
ated as utopian subjects—to become women doctors (khanom doctor)
was instilled in these women during their childhood, a top-down model
practised among most patriarchal Iranian families.
These women constantly referred to transnational geographical loca-
tions, as well as to the immediate localities of neighbourhoods, in the
construction of their class position, such as ‘Englisi neighbourhoods’
referring to suburban leafy areas with lower rates of visible migrants.
These narratives stretched from their long-distance memories of their
schooling in international schools in Iran, to their decision-making about
their children’s schooling, such as whether to send their children to state
or private schools in order to avoid or be included in certain social classes
in British society. The other place-making strategy was in relation to sin-
gular assimilation but also to an intersectional assimilation. ‘Does this
place look like a middle-class English neighbourhood?’ was what Nina
asked me, or another woman who compared my university (as a new uni-
versity) to her daughter’s education at Oxford University were examples
of the importance of place-making to the inscription of class. Such ques-
tions and remarks tell a lot about a migrant woman with a middle-class
job talking to an Iranian junior researcher, in terms of how neighbour-
hoods, schools and universities define people through the meanings and
values that are attached to them. Neighbourhoods are important in char-
acterising what social class one feels belonging to: in terms of the types
of houses people live in, the types of shops they go to, the local cafes and
community gatherings, the schools children are sent to, etc. But what
176 M. Fathi
constitutes an English middle-class area is also about how much of the

composition of the area is related to certain bodies and identities: white
or non-white, wealthy or poor, young or retirement locations. These spe-
cific characteristics of each racial, ethnic, age or professional group reveal
the degree of willingness of individuals in their different life cycles to live
in a specific neighbourhood and may be seen as an informed choice in
terms of class identity. More importantly, they show the significance of
possessing knowledge of the local discourses around class, wealth, cul-
tural capital and taste, belonging and being wanted/included. In order
to be validated, such an understanding of location is dependent on the
need to behave ‘appropriately’, or to carry out the correct performance.
These performances, social daily interactions and the everyday
actions (Goffman 1982) were at the core of the processes of belong-
ing to a place, to a job, to a position and as a result constructing the
one we are. Migrants’ bodies are constantly placed in colonial and racial
discourses (Bhabha 1994; Gilroy 1997) in relation to middle-class and
working-class white people with regard to inclusiveness and the selection
of specific people in these inclusive/exclusive groups. This brings about
discourses around people having to make a selection based on others’
credentials that encourages individuals to define bodies within deserv-
ing and undeserving narratives. Of course, such dichotomies are formed
around morality discourses (Skeggs 1997) and in this case around per-
sonal attributes that are not always negative. Based on a specific context,
a migrant’s sense of belonging is always fluctuating between negative
and positive attributes: issues around dirt/cleanliness, sexuality/lack of
sexual prowess, promiscuity, being educated or lacking education, lack-
ing skills or having the ability to take jobs, and so on. However, there is
a commonality to all classed performances (that they are racialised and
gendered, they are meaningfully loaded within specific contexts). They
(usually, people different to us) are constructed as different us. They do
not have the capacity to become similar to us, hence cannot become part
of our community, our class and our race. By learning how to practise
class-coded acts, migrants impact upon the context in which they live.
In other words, the dominant and hegemonic class structure in Britain
is based on the judgement of practices and tastes and the ascription of
these practices onto certain bodies (Skeggs 2005b, 2011); for example,
by performing ‘Englisi’ (white British) practices such as to ‘dress like
them’ or to go for a skiing holiday or on a cruise, or preferring older
institutions over the new ones, and so on, these women transform and
challenge hegemonic discourses of taste, Iranian lifestyle and migrant

knowledge. Performing middle classness hence turns into a form of local
knowledge that a person acquires in a particular discourse in relation to
the resources available to one in Britain; for example, going on a cruise
requires one to have the permit (a passport here) that allows one to enter
multiple destinations without the border control that is denied from
someone on an Iranian passport. As in racial discourses, middle classness
is seen as ‘white’. When these women say, ‘I do what these people do’,
they clearly do not mean what white working classes or other less skilled
migrants do; thus, by referring to ‘we’ and performances that belong
to ‘we’, they mean a specific form of class-coded practice and a specific
notion of ‘white’.
Race, of course, plays an important part in these arguments. It car-
ries and imposes judgemental views that shape intersectional dichotomies
around Iranians and non-Iranians, Arabs or Afghans but more impor-
tantly, by recognising certain groups as unworthy citizens and particu-
larly by seeing them as lacking and inferior based on attributes other than
race such as membership of the ‘benefit class’, poor white English. These
migrant women showed how they identified these groups as being in a
separate category to the one in which they saw themselves. What was dis-
cussed in classed belonging took this argument further, by emphasising
the role of ‘social recognition’ in creating or disrupting memberships and
comfortable feeling about being included in these social groupings based
on an intersectional understanding of oneself and of others. Belonging
is a feeling usually attributed to security and safety, the right to stay in
a country; this is what Yuval-Davis (2011) refers to as ‘spatial security
right’ and it is something which, typically, migrants are deprived of. She
argues that, in this way, migrants are always living in a ‘risk society’ (Beck
1992). As spatial security is intersectional, migrants are perpetually in
fear of misrecognition in one way or another: for example, the women
in this book, like many other migrants who have social capital through
their professions, renegotiate their sense of belonging as doctors, dentists
and academics. This is what I termed as ‘professional belonging’: a trans-
locational feeling, a non-fixed feeling to locations that creates ever more
contradictory feelings about one’s place in a society, being recognised as
a doctor but not as a citizen, or being needed in the labour market but
branded as foreigner in everyday life experiences. In other words, trans-
locational belonging was used to explain how class intersects with various
social locations. Boundaries of recognition and misrecognition, where
178 M. Fathi
some social locations for class, ethnicity and belonging remain unrec-
ognised by people who are in power, characterise such cases as the EU
referendum. What this book has presented is a demonstration of how
complex class experiences are.
8.4 Complexity of Social Class

In this book, the complexity of class can be summarised into three com-
ponents that run through all chapters:
8.4.1 The Importance of Power

Power, tangible for all, especially those affected by it, is important but
hard to characterise. Access that certain societal groups have to political,
social and economic powers and the lack of access of certain groups to
such powers is determinant in the creation or reproduction of social class
and classed identities. With access or lack of access to power manifest in
different forms of capitals, gender, performances, taste and money to
make use of certain places, racialised superiority and sense of belonging
also change. For example, whom we see as a proper woman in the con-
text of Iran and the UK differs in terms of motherhood, highly paid job,
education, divorce and so on. So power relations here are mainly divided
into familial relations and power of capitals.
1. Power within family: Certain pathways of life are set by older gen-
erations in order to control younger generations. Regulation of
these pathways is carried out within a web of patriarchal power
enforced not only by men over women but also by women over
women across different generations. In Iran, familial surveillance is
an effective means of training and preparing women to gain future
access to social resources. These cultural and economic resources
in families are exclusive to certain children and facilitate their edu-
cation to become doctors. The performances of doctors (med-
ics, dentists and Ph.D. holders) are also set within social relations
that define and recognise which acts are more powerful within the
family.
2. Power through capitals: We know that the definitions of acts are
usually formed discursively. The combinations of pathways and
class performances are important in creating a sense of security
and safety in a person’s life as well as a sense of belonging to

society, to neighbourhoods, to owning a performance and feel-
ing comfortable about it. The underlying layers in the processes
of pathways of becoming a woman, place-making, performances
and senses of belonging have been intertwined with the politi-
cal, economic and cultural powers in Iran and Britain in order
to create experiences of social class for migrants that are more
ambiguous than before; for example, how to behave as a doc-
tor—being a snob, not laughing much, having an opinion and
so on. Iranian migrants increasingly feel uncomfortable about
going back to Iran despite various governmental efforts encour-
aging professionals to return and work in the country. The
British government on the other hand cracks down on immigra-
tion rules and reduces the chances of educated migrants staying
in the UK after their visas expire.
8.4.2 The Importance of Inclusion and Exclusion

Inclusion and exclusion is crucial in the creation of different classes
and classed identities in a society. The processes of inclusion and exclu-
sion are constantly used in identification narratives that are not neces-
sary about class because they are formed translocationally (never fixed
to a group or time period). However, classed pathways are narrated and
naturalised in order to distinguish and exclude individuals who cannot
become part of ‘Us’. Performances and class-coded acts are often per-
formed with the intention of creating a status group that has exclusive
members; these members have the knowledge of how to perform, how
to use a certain kind of language and have similar lifestyles. Becoming a
member of this group, therefore, requires a form of knowledge, an affili-
ation to an institution and a possession of regulatory power to a degree.
This inclusion in the formation of ‘We’ and exclusion in the formation
of the ‘Other’ is related to how communal identities are fundamental in
giving a form of belonging to an individual, including her in their social
spaces and making her comfortable through different means. What is
included in ‘We’ is familiar and known, while the ‘Other’ is associated
with difference and the unfamiliar. These group-makings are shaped by
power relations between individuals and the processes of exclusion and
inclusion.
180 M. Fathi
8.4.3 Learning How to Perform Acts that Are Expected

Certain acts are expected of doctors; this lies at the core of being rec-
ognised as a middle-class subject. For those who desire to belong to a
social location, their lack of belonging becomes a traumatic experience
(Ahmed 1998) and is expressed in narratives of lack and envy (Lawler
1999a, 1999b; Steedman 1986). Sense of belonging to a particular
grouping was manifested through performing either as a studious girl, or
as a proper migrant in British society, or as an educated parent at home.
Various comparisons with other groupings, such as migrants, doctors,
British people middle or working classes, the non-educated who worked
in precarious job situations, who went to new universities in Britain or
private ones in Iran, and who came from populous families, were them-
selves performances that reiterated their membership in Iranian and
British societies. These class distinctions were made in every theme that
this book detailed.
These five processes of class formation share similar characteristics,
but because the women’s understandings (like those of anyone else) are
situated, the processes are likely to have different outcomes. I have tried
to demonstrate that, like most skilled migrants, the women in this book
come with privileged backgrounds, but their migratory processes are not
experienced in the same way. This nuanced relationship between familial
background and the current class position needs to be taken into account
in the studies on intersectionality: in other words, in intersectionality
studies we need to emphasise the processes of becoming as much as we
do with being. Narratives about their life pathways, their present perfor-
mances, belonging, their future desires for themselves and their children,
are widely affected by neoliberal discourses around capitals that deter-
mine migrants’ inclusion. This increasingly important approach is par-
ticularly dangerous in light of the current migration crisis in Europe,
where migrants’ ‘suitability’ is no longer seen in terms of economic
benefits they bring with them to host societies where lower numbers
in migrants are seen as a success of the government. Such quantitative
view towards migrants affects our understanding of social class as well as
other locations. I suggest that using intersectionality and, in the case of
migration studies, a focus on translocations as a resource will allow us to
unpack the future challenges to the changing and fluid positionalities of
individuals who move across borders.
Notes
1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38817422.
2. https://nandosigona.wordpress.com/page/6/.
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Index
A C
Act, 24, 26, 32, 83, 98–100, 104, Class-coded, 99–102, 105, 106, 110,
109, 116, 121, 122, 141 115, 121, 122, 176, 177, 179
Afghan, 32, 33, 39, 128, 139, 142, Class consciousness, 23
160–165, 177 Co-construction, 9
Anthias, 29, 31, 35–38, 41, 42, 100, Collins, 22, 30, 33, 35, 158, 169
110, 146, 156, 158, 170
Authentic, 94, 108, 109, 172, 173
D
Deserving, 136, 161, 163, 171–173,
B 176
Belonging, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 13, 21–23, Deviant, 62
28, 33, 37, 38, 40, 81, 92–94,
97, 99, 101, 104, 106, 114,
128, 131, 135, 139, 141, 142, E
145–148, 150–163, 165, 166, Education, 1–5, 7, 8, 14, 25, 26, 39,
170–180 89, 103, 108, 166, 172, 175,
Bourdieu, 4, 22, 25–28, 38, 41–43, 176, 178
51, 61, 63, 77, 92, 100, 111, Education in Iran, 14
114, 121, 161, 170, 171, 175
Bourdieusian, 22, 25, 28
Brain drain, 6, 14 F
Femininity, 105–108, 110
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 191

of Intersectionality, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52530-7
192 Index
Field, 21, 25–27, 30, 38, 41, 92, 98, 133–142, 146–152, 154–159,
121, 133, 137, 169, 171 161, 162, 164–166, 172–176,
Fieldwork, 8, 9, 128 179, 180
Foreignness, 128–130, 137, 147–149, Neighbourhood, 1, 13, 82, 84, 85,
153, 157, 158, 165 91–95, 139, 159, 175, 176
Normal, 108, 109, 115, 154
Normalisation, 115, 122, 132, 175
G
Globalisation, 146
Governing, 49, 50, 53, 58, 59 P
Performance, 3, 7, 9, 13, 24, 41, 42,
81, 97–106, 108–110, 112, 114–
H 118, 120–123, 139, 170–173,
Habitus, 25–27, 85, 92, 98, 100, 106 176–180
Hierarchies, 85, 136, 140, 147, 154, Performativity, 13, 21, 37, 97, 98,
159, 160, 162, 163, 165 101, 113, 114, 122
Homeland, 37, 145, 155, 157, 159 Place-making, 3, 13, 81, 170, 172,
173, 175, 179
Prestige, 24, 25, 27, 36
I Privilege, 2, 3, 14, 31, 34, 35, 40, 42,
Imagined, 42, 82, 117, 120 104, 129, 135, 154, 169–171,
IMF, 6, 14 180
Iranian economy, 5, 7
Iranian medical society (IMS), 11
Islamic revolution, 7, 10, 82 R
Racialization, 127
Recognition, 23, 28, 38, 42, 91, 93,
L 99, 100, 107–109, 117, 149,
Labour market, 2, 4, 5, 24, 35, 177 153, 161, 164, 171–173, 175,
177
Religion, 7, 10, 12, 21, 159
M Respectability, 105, 113, 114, 123
Marxism, 22
Morality, 95, 101, 110, 118–120, 122,
123, 176 S
School, 2, 13, 14, 89, 90, 95
Situated, 8, 30, 37–42, 95, 99–102,
N 109, 120–122, 132, 146, 165,
Narrative, 1, 3, 7–9, 11, 12, 21, 30, 170, 174, 180
33, 34, 37–40, 42, 84, 85, 87, Situated intersectionality, 32, 131
88, 91, 99–107, 109, 111–113,
115–117, 120–123, 128,
Index 193
Skeggs, 2, 4, 25, 27, 28, 42, 81, 100, Triple oppression, 30

105–107, 112, 114, 122, 152,
170, 173, 176
Space, 2, 7, 13, 22, 28, 40, 81, 82, U
84, 85, 88, 89, 91, 92, 97, 100, Unbelonging, 40, 84, 131, 148, 151,
114, 128, 139, 145, 155, 166 152
Spatial, 13, 82, 88, 92–94, 177
Status, 5, 10, 15, 22, 24, 27, 31, 40,
86, 87, 99, 102, 106, 116, 118, Y
128–131, 134, 135, 139, 140, Yuval-davis, 12, 13, 29, 31–33, 36,
154, 179 39, 42, 99, 100, 122, 137, 141,
Surveillance, 103, 175, 178 142, 145, 146, 148, 151, 153,
157, 159, 162, 170, 173, 177
T
Translocational, 3, 7, 13, 21, 36–39,
41, 42, 121, 122, 145, 151, 156,
157, 163, 165, 166, 173, 177

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INTERSECTIONALITY,

CLASS AND MIGRATION

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The Politics of Intersectionality

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© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover illustration: Maryam Prout (Fathi)

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The Politics of Intersectionality series has been edited by Prof. Ange-

project?15 Is it a method or epistemological approach? Is it (merely) a

engagement with the best and brightest global thinking on intersectionality

12. Minh-ha, Trinh T. (1989), Woman, Native, Other: Writing

I am also grateful to my colleagues at Bournemouth University whose

1 Class, Intersectionality and Iranian Diaspora 1

2 Intersectionality and Translocational Class 21

3 Classed and Gendered Growing up 49

6 Classed Racialisation 127

7 Classed Belonging 145

8 Understanding Class Intersectionally: A Way Forward 169

At the heart of this book is an in-depth analysis of class experiences that

© The Author(s) 2017 1

Intersections of identity are at the heart of this book in terms of meth-

and Ghaneirad 2010).1 Health and education sectors were expanded

1.1 Iranian Women’s Employment and Class

Increasingly, women are barred from studying certain subjects at univer-

1.2 Iranian Migrants and Social Class

Revolution particularly caused an increase in the number of physicians

as the USA (Bozorgmehr and Sabagh 1996; Bozorgmehr et al. 1996;

1.3 Making Sense of Class in Migration:

argues, ‘when we relate stories of our lives, we implicitly communicate

Dialogical co-construction of meanings takes place in a larger social con-

1.4 Iranian Parties, Concerts and Doctors’ Hubs

as Iranian.11 I also became involved with the Iranian Medical Society

1.5 Religion, an Absent Theme in Class Stories

1.6 Outline of the Book

10. One woman who was introduced in a seminar as a potential participant spoke

Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow

Mehran, G. (2003a). The paradox of tradition and modernity in female education

Rostami-Povey, E. (2016). Women’s Education and Employment in Iran. In

Intersectionality and Translocational Class

This book is about the way in which subjective constructions of class

© The Author(s) 2017 21

This book is not a Marxist or a Weberian analysis of social class. It

2.1 Classic Literature of Class and the Question

2.1.1 Marxism and Class

2.1.2 Status and Class

is represented by the conditions of the commodity or labour markets.

2.1.3 The Cultural Turn to Class

…structured spaces of positions (or posts) whose properties depend on

As people experience mobility between fields1 they become aware of

(economic, cultural and social) capitals to be valid they need to be recog-

2.2 Intersectionality and the Treatment of Class

is the extent to which intersectionality can deal with narratives of eve-

[…] as signifying the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects

Following this definition, and by acknowledging the multiplicity of intersec-

[…] a way of understanding and analysing the complexity in the world, in

There are various accounts of how intersectionality developed into being

deprived (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1983). Anthias and Yuval-Davis and

2.2.1 Situated Intersectionality

2.2.2 Power Relations and Intersectionality

different generations of political opposition in Iranian diaspora have

The focus of analysis [matrix of meaning-making] is thus not “just” domi-

12. Minh-ha, Trinh T. (1989), Woman, Native, Other: Writing

1.1 Iranian Women’s Employment and Class

1.2 Iranian Migrants and Social Class

as the USA (Bozorgmehr and Sabagh 1996; Bozorgmehr et al. 1996;

1.3 Making Sense of Class in Migration:

1.4 Iranian Parties, Concerts and Doctors’ Hubs

1.5 Religion, an Absent Theme in Class Stories

1.6 Outline of the Book

10. One woman who was introduced in a seminar as a potential participant spoke

Intersectionality and Translocational Class

2.1 Classic Literature of Class and the Question

2.1.1 Marxism and Class

2.1.2 Status and Class

2.1.3 The Cultural Turn to Class

2.2 Intersectionality and the Treatment of Class

2.2.2 Power Relations and Intersectionality

2.2.3 Privileged Position and Intersectionality

2.3 Identity and Translocational Positionality

Classed and Gendered Growing up

3.1.1 Creating Ambition: Passing on Class to the Girls

3.1.2 Mothers and Class Surveillance

2. It was a job that other people wished for.

3.1.3 Lack of Choice or Destined Pathways?

3.2.1 Lack of Ambition as Deviant

3.2.2 Not Discussing Class to Construct Classed Identity

3.2.3 Embarrassment and Normalisation

3.2.4 Westernisation as a ‘Normal’ Pathway

3.3 The Making of a Moral Self