Constructing Diaspora Politics: The Case of Long-Distance Nationalism in Iranian Student Activism in France in the 1960s and 70s

Keanu Heydari, University of Michigan

This paper examines how Iranian students in France forged a diasporic nationalist identity before the period that is traditionally understood to be the global “diasporization” of the Iranian diaspora (the Islamic Revolution of 1979). By investigating the hotly contested domain of Iranian student activism as embodied in the disputes between members of the Union of Iranian Students in France (U.E.I.F.), this study argues that what was at one moment an institutional power struggle for control over the narrative and identity of Iranian students abroad – with one side favoring technocratic liberal reformism (constitutional monarchy) and the other right-wing royal absolutism – was also a barometer for the Iranian state’s ability (or lack thereof) to manage and contain dissent abroad. This study also frames the construction of an Iranian diasporic nationalist identity in its particularly French context. In paying careful attention to the migration history of Iranians to France, I offer the beginnings of a social history of postwar Iranian political culture as it was mediated and experienced in a cosmopolitan European context.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 132. Nationalism on the Ground: Migration, Inclusion, and Exclusion in Postwar Europe