Insights from Iranian Women on the Making of a Diaspora in Norway

01.05.2025

Emma Massanet

A mere 20 minutes away from the heart of the Norwegian capital, a group of Iranian women sit around a dining room table, sipping slowly on cups of tea as their laughter fills the room. The youngest of them, 32-year-old Mona Khazai, is excited to share her plans for the future, as a newly graduated optometrist. “It has been very challenging for me to find the right path at university, so I’m very proud of myself for finally finishing!”. Her family left her hometown of Sanandaj in Iran when she was around 7, but she recalls her first few years of life being spent preparing for their escape. She spent 12 years in Turkey as a refugee, fearing deportation back to Iran, before being granted permanent residency in Norway.

Through a series of interviews with different women who were forced to seek political exile in Norway from the Islamic Regime in Iran, this article aims to explore the role that women play in creating and upholding a diasporic entity. By studying the Iranian diaspora that is being created as we speak, a great understanding of the future trajectory of Iran can be explored. Furthermore, it would provide us with valuable insights into the future of international relations, especially European-Iranian relations.

One of the first and most important steps of this exploration lies in the understanding of the term diaspora as a concept through which a new national identity is being created. This new national identity comes to life through the fusion of national values from the homeland and the hostland, and will often be affected by the women’s motivation to leave their homeland behind ^[1]Butler, K.D. (2001) ‘Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse’, Diaspora: a Journal of Transnational Studies 10(2): 189-219, Dufoix, S. (2008) Diasporas. University of California Press.. Through my interviews, I was able to gain a deeper knowledge as to what motivated the exile of many Iranian women arriving to Norway. Our conversation helped me understand what aspects of the different national identities they had been exposed to were deemed central by them to carry into this diasporic-identity in the making. Understanding the Iranian women that I spoke to and their life experiences is vital in the attempt to explore how they shape and create the identity of the Iranian diaspora in Norway, more specifically regarding cultural practices, and finding the balance between community building and social integration. The combination of these two aspects provides for an interesting case study, given the political motivation behind their exile and the increasing focus on women’s rights and freedom, both in Iran and internationally. This article aims to offer a well-rounded illustration of how these two factors lead to the creation of a distinctive culture, influenced by aspects of both Iranian and Norwegian culture. The question then becomes: how do the cultural, social, and political experiences of Iranian women in exile contribute to the formation and sustainment of the Iranian diaspora in Norway, and what roles do these women play in fostering a cultural identity that allows for the preservation of this diaspora?

Defining the Concept of Diaspora- Somewhere Between Norway and Iran

Nika Borhani, our hostess for the night, and Samaneh Shabani, celebrate Khazai’s accomplishments. Both in their early 40s, they finished their education in Iran before arriving in Norway over a decade ago. Despite this, all three women can relate to the struggles of integration in a new society. Most surprisingly, the one thing they all have found most challenging is the feeling of stability: not only knowing your rights in this new country, but accepting the fact that you have rights to begin with. Although they all feel settled in Norway today, their friendship and the Iranian communities they continue to surround themselves with are a source of great comfort and stability. The feeling of closeness and community fills the room as these women share their stories with me, and the sentiment of being Iranian fills the room. As I sit across the table from these women I find myself somewhere between Norway and Iran, and briefly, I am introduced to their diaspora. 

The diaspora, “a human population scattered beyond a home territory, though still interconnected,”^[2]Castree, N., Kitchin, R., & Rogers, A. (2013). A Dictionary of Human Geography. OUP Oxford. 105. https://books.google.es/books?id=eYWcAQAAQBAJ has emerged as a result of decades of globalization and transnationalism, and has become increasingly relevant for the study of International Relations. However, as the focus on the relationship between the ‘diaspora’ and the ‘homeland’ grows, many aspects are being overlooked, such as the exploration of the diaspora as an independent entity.  Women, historically in charge of emotional labor in societies, find themselves in a central role in creating, maintaining, and teaching cultural traditions. Therefore, they hold much power in creating diasporic culture, becoming the bridges between here and there.

Reasons for, and Conditions of, the Dispersal

Much of the dispersal of Iranians to Norway — and other parts of the West — came as a reaction to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and, by extension, the way in which the homeland has evolved under the Islamic Regime^[3]Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Islamic Regime of Iran focused the policies of the country to be “Anti-West/Anti-America”, focusing on religion and Islamic law as a foundation for the … Continue reading. This gives a predisposition of characteristics for the development of the Iranian diaspora in Norway. For instance, the vast majority of its members, regardless of the socioeconomic background they left Iran with, have an opposition to the Islamic Regime, and will oftentimes define themselves as “liberal”- at the very least in relation to the culture being established by the regime in Iran. A trend of political engagement in the hostland, independent of the level of political activity and association of the women while still residing in Iran was proven. This reinforces the political conditions of their exile^[4]Example: Academic scholar J. Bauer conducted a series of interviews through which she could support said argument (Bauer, 2000). . 

Our host Bohrani went into detail about the political difficulties she faced in Iran, which ultimately led to her exile. Having two highly educated parents, with her father being a professor at the University of Tehran, she was always very politically aware. Her family spoke often of Iran prior to the revolution, and much of her early childhood was characterized by war in her homeland. Having been born in 1984, a year after the consolidation of the Iranian revolution, she lived through the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), multiple Kurdish insurgencies^[5]KDPI-Komala conflict, 1984-1999; KDPI insurgency, 1989-1986., and rising tensions in the region that can still be felt to this day. Foreign threats, however, were not the only conflicts her life was shaped by. She described her life as marked by constant repression from the regime, and so she began finding ways to defy it. From small choices, like wearing makeup or daring to leave the house with her hijab loosely covering her hair and allowing for much of it to be visible, she quickly started facing issues with the morality police. Bohrani recalls first getting in trouble over these choices in 1998- she was only 14 years old at the time. A defining moment for her and her family came after she was arrested during a protest, where she was badly beaten, and her father struggled to get her out of prison. There is still a dent on the back of her skull from said confrontation. From that moment, it became clear to her and her family that the only way for them all to be safe was for her to leave the country before the police came back for her or her family members. In 2012, she was able to get in touch with an Iranian man she knew from her early teens who had found refuge in Norway, and she was able to get permanent residency in Norway thanks to their marriage. One commonality for all of the women sitting around the table is their perception of themselves as political refugees: they all talk about having greater economic stability in Iran compared to their current situation in Norway, and all coming from well-established families. Therefore, the political repression of the Islamic State is what makes them all agree on the impossibility of life in Iran – both for themselves and their children. 

Relationship with the Homeland

Being part of the diaspora is not a passive state of being but rather an active “diasporan identity requiring involvement”^[6]Butler, K.D. (2001) ‘Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse’, Diaspora: a Journal of Transnational Studies 10(2): 189-219, Dufoix, S. (2008) Diasporas. University of California Press.. It is common for the diaspora members to be aware of a nationalistic identity rooted in a shared heritage, often including a common language, faith and ethnic ancestry – a concept defined as ethnonationality. 

This, in turn, dictates a requirement for a relationship with the homeland. However, that is not to say that said relationship will be the same for the entire community. We often find that a variety of aspects dictates one’s relationship with the homeland: when one left Iran (or, in the case of first and second-generation Iranians, when their parents left Iran), one’s socioeconomic past in the homeland, one’s wishes for the future of the homeland, etc. For instance, Iranian historical author Nima Naghibi analyzes the production of memory by Iranian women who were forced to leave Iran during the 1979 revolution^[7]Naghibi, Nima, Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from the Diaspora (Minneapolis, MN, 2016; online edn, Minnesota Scholarship Online, 19 Jan. 2017), … Continue reading. She explores feelings such as nostalgia, guilt, and anger, and how these interact and shape the memories that these women hold of Iran, alongside the memories they pass down to their children and collective memory of the diaspora. One of the defining aspects of these memoires is the “nostalgia for a lost childhood, (…) deeply bound up with nostalgia for a lost (pre-revolutionary) nation/home”^[8]Ibid. In this case, the aspects of national identity brought to the diaspora by these women are not the same as the national identity currently upheld by the Islamic regime, but rather that of a pre-revolutionary Iran, embedded with their positionality as children at the time in which they fled their homeland.

Seeing as these women were forced to leave Iran due to the dangers that life there had in store for them, how are they able to maintain a loving relationship with their homeland? During the interview, Mona Khazai emphasized her identity as Iranian being connected to what she called “old Iran”. “I grew up in a Kurdish city during the 1990s and early 2000s, with my dad’s side of the family identifying as Kurdish, while my mother’s side was Persian. There was always a conflict between these sides^[9]Following the partition of the Ottoman empire (1918-1922), where the kurdish population was denied their own state, Kurds became minority ethnic groups- that have often been oppressed by the … Continue reading in society, like people around me, and the regime, didn’t allow for me to be both. My parents chose then to just teach us about ‘the old Iran’, the history and culture of the land, before religion and before the regime had so much influence on everything^[10]When referring to the ‘old Iran’, we are talking about ancient Persepolis during the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 B.C.), all the way up to 650 A.D.. It is this part of Iran we like to celebrate together as a community here in Norway. We get together for Persian New Year, we talk about our rich history — this is how I would raise my children if I ever had any: not as Persian, not as Kurdish, not as Sunni or Shia, but as Iranian. That is what we are, and we should find pride in our history and cultural traditions.” 

Based on my interviews with these women, one thing is clear – their definition of Iranian nationalism is one that they are slowly creating. What the diaspora in Norway defines as ‘Iranian identity’, is in many aspects completely unrelated to the requirements we often think of regarding national identity. They are adopting a new approach to ethnonationalism, where religion and language are put aside, and it is their ethnic ancestry and cultural practices that are being revived and adapted to contemporary society in Norway. 

Relationship with Hostlands

Generally speaking, Iranian women tend to have good relationships with their hostland. They often come here with personal development goals, focusing specifically on opportunities to pursue higher levels of education, or professional careers that would not have been available to them in Iran. That is not to say that they do not face challenges in Europe, and they are often faced with harsh stereotypes about Middle Eastern and Muslim women. Due to the extremist perception of the Iranian Regime in the West, they are often met with negative expectations of conservatism and religious extremism. Our host, Nika Bohrani, tired of being met with these expectations of extremism, chose to convert to Christianity, as a way to separate herself from any extremist association, that be to religion or the Iranian regime itself. This is a common theme for Muslim refugees and individuals in exile in European and North American countries^[11]Bauer, J.L. (2000). Desiring Place: Iranian “Refugee” Women and the Cultural Politics of Self and Community in the Diaspora. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East … Continue reading. The process of cultural assimilation is also a big challenge for the diaspora, and becomes especially evident in instances of raising children born within exile. Two of the women I interviewed, Borhani and Shabani, both have sons aged 11, who were born in Norway. Although the process of assimilation has been challenging, they both share that one of the biggest cultural shocks they experienced was seeing their children growing up and developing the ability to say no. “Back in Iran, you couldn’t do anything without a justification. You had to explain yourself constantly, even if you weren’t doing anything against the law. We couldn’t trust rules, or just do things because we wanted to. Our children, they exhibit patterns, patterns that come from the stability of knowing your rights, and not having to question them. I still struggle to say no sometimes without justifying myself, at work for instance, when I talk to my colleagues. But I’m happy to see that my children didn’t get that, that they get to be sure of their right to say no.” 

Interrelationships Within Communities of the Diaspora

A common theme across Iranian diasporas in the Western hemisphere is how the challenges faced by the exiled woman can be seen manifested in their diasporic community. “In contrast to others, Iranian women’s position vis-a-vis their communities is also heightened or distinguished by several factors — the globalization of their sexualization as stereotyped Middle Eastern, Muslim women, the degree of alienation from recent experiences with the Iranian homeland and its politicization of religion, which make it more complicated to use national and religious referents as sources of comfort in resettlement, and the emotional intensity of cultural commitments to family, political ideals, and social relationships»^[12]Ibid; 181.. In simpler terms, one of the biggest issues Iranian women face, both in Iran and the diaspora, is the layers of expectations projected onto them, expectations that are often very contradicting. These expectations are often tied to their role as women, and what that role entails in regards to their religion, race, and nationality. One of the many reasons why the study of the Iranian diaspora can provide a vital understanding of the future of International Politics, is the way in which Iranian women often stray away from all the ‘conventional’ aspects of diasporic creation that we are familiar with. Having been disproportionately oppressed by their homeland, and with their motivation to leave being their own government, their diaspora is not meant to be a place for their homeland to exist outside of its borders. On the contrary- their diaspora challenges the national identity of their homeland, aiming to create a new version of Iranian identity, one they believe to be truer to Iranian culture than the one maintained by the current Iranian Regime. While being central players in the community formation of the diaspora, Iranian women find themselves in a cultural limbo. They thrive in their new hostlands, often assimilating better than their male counterparts^[13]Ibid.. This could be credited to their fluid identity perception — they left Iran looking for a radical change, and are therefore better fit to assimilate. 

A New Definition of Iranian Nationalism is Born in the Diaspora

While still holding the traditional roles of mothers, they are in charge of raising the coming generations of Iranians in exile, installing in them a cultural perception of women, relationships, sexuality, and religion dominated by the women’s experience of life. In other words, the community they are forming lacks a lot of the patriarchal foundation stones that societies such as the Iranian — and Norwegian — are built upon. This, in hindsight, often leads to increased problems in the home — their Iranian male counterparts struggle to adjust to this formed community, and individuals who had identified themselves as “liberal” back in Iran, begin advocating for a cultural conservatism within their homes, citing belonging to the homeland. 

When I raised these issues around the table, 32-year-old Khazai explained: “The men in our communities — not all of them obviously, but I have experienced it many times before — they struggle to accept the loss of power. We face a lot of challenges trying to integrate. It’s challenges we’d rather face than the fear for our lives in Iran, but the men, they’re not used to facing challenges like this every day. And so yes, I can relate to them suddenly wanting to hold on to aspects of Iran that they didn’t care about before. But those aspects, they’re not the ‘old Iran’, they’re not the culture we want to maintain. And so, at the same time, when holidays come around, like Iranian New Year, or Eid, we are all forced to stop caring about these conservative aspects. There is more power in being together, in unity, and I think that’s the most important part of the creation of this diaspora, to focus on the unity that is born from our cultural practices”. 

The women also emphasized that this is mostly a challenge when they first arrive in Norway. The women seem to be more concerned about the future of their Iranian community in exile in regard to their children. Borhani and Shabani both agree that at the end of the day, their job is not to force their children to participate in these cultural traditions, but rather to expose them to them, so they can develop a sense of pride. As Borhani explained, his son is always going to have dark hair, and tan skin, things that to a certain extent will make him stand out among his peers. “I just want to make sure he doesn’t have to grow up with an internal anger, and I think understanding where he is from and why these things that make him different are good things, will make it easier for him. After, it is up to him how involved in the diaspora he wants to be”. 

Creating and Maintaining Cultural Identity in the Diaspora

Questions that may arise regarding the creation and maintenance of a cultural identity in the Diaspora are often linked to their everyday practices. For Iranian women who find themselves ideologically removed from the reality of life in their homeland, seeking out elements within their routines and daily lives allows them to still seek out and maintain a connection to Iran. For many, language acquisition becomes a key link to the homeland. Given that mothers are often left to do the majority of childcare in the home, they are often left in charge of second language acquisition for their children. By examining how their beliefs and everyday practices impact their children’s heritage language development, one can more easily understand the daily elements of life that are politicized with the aim of creating and maintaining the diaspora. For instance, successful heritage language maintenance is largely due to parents’ pro-heritage language ideologies and daily practices. Additionally, the interplay between language and cultural values, along with the parents’ migration experiences and English proficiency, has been shown to enhance the effectiveness of second language acquisition in Iranian households in the UK^[14]Gharibi, K., & Mirvahedi, S. H. (2021). ‘You are Iranian even if you were born on the moon’: Family language policies of the Iranian diaspora in the UK. Journal of Multilingual and … Continue reading. Strong social networks within the diaspora have also proven to be a vital tool in maintaining the cultural identity within the diaspora. This is especially important in Norway due to the political exile that dictates the conditions for the creation of the diaspora, being able to visit Iran is often not a viable option. The created community in exile then becomes the closest thing to a physical manifestation of the homeland. 

Advocacy of Women from the Iranian Diaspora

A central aspect of the interviews I conducted focused on the advocacy of women from the Iranian diaspora in Norway. I wanted to understand exactly what their aims for the diaspora are. If the argument is that the diaspora is allowing them the ability to create a new sense of national identity, are they advocating for the preservation of Iranian cultural practices, or rather celebrating them? My exploration leads me to believe that, for the Iranian diaspora in Norway, their advocacy efforts are two-fold. 

On one hand, the women I interviewed seem to feel a sense of responsibility to maintain Iranian cultural practices while restoring the aspects that had been tainted by the Islamic regime. For some of them, that entails a secular approach to culture, or at the very least a separation of religion from the Regime’s modes of imposure. For instance, our hostess, Nika Borhani, has continued to be vocal about her opposition to the regime and often participates in cultural events targeted towards the Iranian diaspora in Norway. Through these events, she hopes to create a community that is proud of its culture and traditions, and that can separate the suffering imposed by the regime from the reality of life as a free Iranian. 

On the other hand, as more generations of Iranians are born in Norway, they hope that their work as members of the diaspora can bridge together the two cultures they find themselves between. They wish to create a community where the members can feel proud of the duality of their identity. Within the diaspora, you will often see Norwegian cultural events such as civil baptisms, celebrations of the constitutional day, or even Christmas, adopted as cultural events of the diaspora that get fused with Iranian cuisine, music, and games. Ultimately, the advocacy of Iranian women of the diaspora centers on the ability to create a home enriched by the plurality of cultural practices available to them. 

Preliminary Recommendations for Cultural Policies

The following section includes some preliminary recommendations for cultural practices, that might be useful for the Iranian diaspora, specifically regarding policies that the Norwegian government, or any other government, who find themselves with growing diasporas that are still in the process of being formed. 

• Cultural reforms in integration policies

Although assimilation is a vital part of integration, a cultural reform within our integration policies could facilitate many of these processes, both for the members of the diaspora, but also for the citizens of new host countries. In a world that is increasingly becoming globalized, we are constantly experiencing the arrival of new communities and cultures within our territories.  One of the main aspects that characterizes integration policies, is the belief that for these foreign cultures to thrive in their new hostlands, they need to give in to the local culture and integrate by exchanging their identity for the one in their new country. This creates a challenge for the migrants arriving in Norway for the first time, making adjustment to their new life more challenging, while simultaneously allowing for hostility to be normalized within Norwegian society towards newcomers who are yet to ‘assimilate’. As mentioned earlier in this article, Iranian women are often faced with expectations of religious extremism and conservatism in their new host countries, while Iranian men turn towards the religious codes that they had originally fled Iran from as a response to the challenge of assimilation. It is here where the diaspora’s practices of fusing identities can be put to good use. Policies should focus on measures that allow these new and different cultures to find compatibility with Norwegian society. As our hostess Nika Bohrani pointed out regarding her son, no matter how much they attempt to assimilate, there will always be aspects in which they are different from Norwegian society, that be because of their appearance, religious beliefs, or cultural practices. Encouraging these differences as something that could be beneficial to Norwegian society could greatly impact integration policies for the better. 

• Expansion of Integration Policies to Go Beyond Religious Practices 

Many of the policies already existing within Norwegian politics to facilitate integration and protect diasporic minorities from discrimination center around religion, like the ability to request time off of work or school to attend religious celebrations like Eid. However, for diasporic communities like the Iranian diaspora, where a central part of their identity-in-making is to step away from religion and rather focus on ancestral culture, the recognition of cultural celebrations such as Iranian New Year could facilitate their ability to preserve Iranian identity for their children or grandchildren who were born in Norway. 

More generally speaking, involving the diaspora in the development of policies that center toward them could be of great benefit to both policymakers and diaspora citizens. A big part of the influx of new diasporas taking place in Norway, and more broadly in Europe over the past 50 years, are centered in exile from the homeland due to war or armed conflict. Because of this, diaspora members are often stripped of their political power and ability to be involved with politics, both in their hostland and in their homeland. Being able to interact with these communities before the establishment of new policies that affect them should therefore be a central step in the process of any policymaker. 

The Future of the Diaspora

Exploring this community-in-the-making can provide us with valuable information regarding the future of international relations and transnationalism. The Iranian diaspora in Norway is still in the very early days of its fortification, with the very first Iranians arriving in the country in the first decade after the Islamic revolution (1985-1987)^[15]J. Dahle (2025) Iranere I Norge vet hva frihetskamp er- og om kreftene som lurer politikerene trill rundt. Human Rights Service. Frihetsverdier. … Continue reading. Diasporas allow for the acknowledgment of new ways of belonging, and their study raises questions about how we identify ourselves and each other. During our interview, Mona Khazai stated: “When someone asks me where I’m from, there isn’t an easy answer. I’m Iranian, and Kurd, and Persian, but I’m also more comfortable expressing myself in Turkish after spending so many years there. At the same time, Norway is my home; it is the place I feel safest in, and a lot of the time, I wish I could answer the question more straightforwardly, but then I realize that a simple answer wouldn’t be true to who I am. And I am not the only one with a complex answer to this question”. Her sentiments raise a vital point that will grow into one of the core questions within research in International Relations. As globalization and transnationalism become more relevant in our political sphere, ‘here’ and ‘there’ become more abstract. There is a need to change how we classify belonging, and being. Unique communities such as diasporas might be the perfect case study to illustrate an alternative reality, and how we could benefit from drawing inspiration from them.

Bibliography:

Bauer, J.L. (2000). Desiring Place: Iranian “Refugee” Women and the Cultural Politics of Self and Community in the Diaspora. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 20(1), 180-199, URL : https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/191202.

Butler, K.D. (2001) ‘Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse’, Diaspora: a Journal of Transnational Studies 10(2): 189-219. 

Castree, N., Kitchin, R., & Rogers, A. (2013). A Dictionary of Human Geography. OUP Oxford. 105, URL : https://books.google.es/books?id=eYWcAQAAQBAJ

Dahle, J. (2025) Iranere I Norge vet hva frihetskamp er- og om kreftene som lurer politikerene trill rundt. Human Rights Service. Frihetsverdier, URL : https://www.rights.no/2025/04/iranere-i-norge-vet-hva-frihetskamp-er-og-om-kreftene-som-lurer-politikerne-trill-rundt/. 

Dufoix, S. (2008) Diasporas. University of California Press.

Elahi, B., & Karim, P.M. (2011). Introduction: Iranian Diaspora. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31(2), 381-387, URL : https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/453353.

Gharibi, K., & Mirvahedi, S. H. (2024). ‘You are Iranian even if you were born on the moon’: Family language policies of the Iranian diaspora in the UK. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 45(4), 1017–1032, URL : https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2021.1935974

Naghibi, Nima, Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from the Diaspora (Minneapolis, MN, 2016; online edn, Minnesota Scholarship Online, 19 Jan. 2017), URL : https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.qmul.ac.uk/10.5749/minnesota/9780816683826.003.0006

Noor, Anila. (2014). Iranian Women in the Diaspora: ‘Being Here and Being There’. Social Justice Perspectives (SJP). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2105/17383