Conditional Belonging

Sahar Sadeghi is Associate Professor of Sociology at Muhlenberg College.

Conditional Belonging is a serious, timely contribution to scholarship on the racialization and migration experiences of Iranians. By providing the first in-depth, comparative analysis of Iranian immigrants in the United States and Germany, Sadeghi deepens our understanding of national and cultural membership in both societies. Clear, readable, and effective, this is an important book that answers the call for a more global and comparative Iranian diaspora studies. * Neda Maghbouleh, author of The Limits of Whiteness * Conditional Belonging is a brilliant, piercing ethnographic portrayal of how first-and second-generation Iranians in the United States and Germany navigate the complexities of racialization while struggling - but never quite succeeding - to gain full recognition and social belonging. Gripping first-hand accounts reveal how race-based nationalism continues to inform the social order in liberal, democratic states and amplify the sidelining of so-called foreign others. This timely book is a must-read for understanding both the visible and hidden racial projects that undermine collective commitments to unconditional inclusion and equality. * Manata Hashemi, author of Coming of Age in Iran * Conditional Belonging demonstrates the ways in which empire (US) and racial nationalism (Germany) operate to situate Iranians as perpetual foreigners, including among the linguistically and culturally adept second generation and the most socially integrated of immigrants. There are differences though between these two places, in both the mainstream discourses deployed that produce othering and in Iranian diaspora practices of coping and resistance. Sadeghi's fine attention to empirical detail shows us how these variations play out and how the rise of white nationalism in both countries has produced new yet divergent strategies of resistance. * Louise Cainkar, author of Homeland Insecurity *