Multiculturalism & Diasporic Citizenship: Exploring Iranian Cultural Production in Sweden

The varying experiences of multiculturalism in European and North American societies have thrown into sharp relief the continued importance of diasporic cultural identity, community development, and cultural politics in the midst of growing anti-immigration and nativist movements. Anthropologists have long sought to understand these phenomena by theorizing constructions of diasporic belonging in terms of cultural citizenship, long-distance nationalism, and diasporic citizenship (Ong 1996, Glick-Schiller et al., 2001, Siu 2005). However, recent scholarship has suggested that ‘diaspora’ itself must be re-conceived as practice rather than merely a descriptive state of being, an idea that requires new approaches to questions of cultural citizenship and cultural politics (Dufoix 2008). In this presentation, I offer an ethnographic account to examine the ways in which cultural politics impact the practice of diaspora through community programs and multiculturalist policies in Stockholm, Sweden. How are Iranians responding to racial and multicultural discourses through their productions of diasporic culture? Do these programs impact the practices of diaspora and the negotiation of diasporic citizenship in these communities? I argue that studying cultural production as a field in diaspora in this way allows a focus on practice that points up the ways in which multiple regimes of power (state, community, financial, transnational) are asserted among and upon diaspora groups, vitally influencing their everyday practices in response to shifting geopolitical and transnational circumstances.