Race, Parenting and Identity in the Iranian Diaspora Tracing Intergenerational Dialogues

Abstract

This paper traces intergenerational learning through a series of dialogues on race, parenting, and identity held with Iranian parents, grandparents and youth at a Persian language school located in the US. Drawing on ethnographic, interactional, and participatory design research methodologies, the analysis focuses on the forms of intergenerational sensemaking and social analysis that emerged over time and what they can teach us about (a) the intersections of parenting and racial identity within Iranian diasporic communities in the United States and (b) the complex forms of personhood (Gordon, 1997; Tuck, 2009), learning and becoming among Iranians raising children and grandchildren outside Iran. Bringing close attention to specific instances of talk as embedded in broader relational temporalities and dialogic arcs, findings illustrate the shifting ways participants articulated the educational needs of Iranian children living outside Iran, the emergence of complex and sometimes contradictory discourses on race and identity, and the ways participants worked together to disentangle self-defense and self-determination from the politics of respectability. The discussion considers the implications of complex personhood for the design, mediation, and interpretation of intergenerational sensemaking regarding race and identity within the Iranian diaspora, with attention to broader processes of community codesign.

Expanding Theories of Educational Change in Family & Community-Led Designs

“…All of these contexts may profoundly shape local theorizing and communities' capacities to imagine possibilities for transformative change. In the companion pieces across the special sections focused on the work of the Family Leadership Design Collaborative, our partner collaboratives offer nuanced portrayals of how these theories of change played out in specific racial and sociopolitical contexts as they co-designed school decision-making and humanizing relations with Latinx immigrant families and educators in West Salt Lake City (Kuttner et al, 2022); intergenerational learning and parenting for complex personhood, race and identities in the Chicago Iranian diaspora (Vossoughi, 2022); Black and Brown parent solidarities to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline in Los Angeles (this issue, Chin et al); and intergenerational cultural learning to "raise good elders" in Chicago global Indigenous communities (Bang et al, forthcoming). In tandem with Khalifa and Abdi's closing commentary (this issue) reflecting on both the entanglements of coloniality and the possibilities of centering collective dreaming in ancestral and community knowledges, it is our hope that these ongoing inquiries and emergent framework will support educational and community leaders across contexts in cultivating solidarity-driven codesign with youth, families and communities of color and building our collective capacities to imagine and realize educational justice and wellbeing.…”

“…Seattle-based community leaders designed facilitative practices for crossracial coalition work. In Detroit, community organizers worked with researchers to develop an action research guide for youth and community organizers (more in-depth examinations of particular codesign projects can be found in Kuttner et al, 2022;Vossoughi, 2022;Chin et al 2023); and Bang et al (forthcoming) across the linked special sections in this journal as well as on the FLDC website: https://familydesigncollab.org/).…”