Iraqi Women in Diaspora: Resettlement, Religion, and Remembrance in the Iraqi Diaspora in Toronto and Detroit, 1980 to present

This dissertation explores how Iraqi migrant women living in Toronto and Detroit negotiate identity within existing networks of ethnic Iraqi communities settled in North America. The focus is on how ethno-religious identity is imagined and performed in diaspora as new generations of migrant Iraqi women reinvent their relationship with the host countries of Canada and the U.S., and with the homeland. As part of the global diaspora of Iraqis, women of different ages and ethnicities reinvent identity from within the official multiculturalisms of Canada and the U.S. By engaging with themes of historical memory, generation, diasporic citizenship, and religiosity, I explore how Iraqi women remember, retell, and reinvent the past through their narratives. At the core of this research is a unique archive of more than a hundred oral histories conducted with Iraqi women in Amman, Detroit and Toronto. Drawing upon this archive, I explore how Iraqi women recreate official ‘myths’ of nationalism and the nation, but also, and importantly, shape subjective narratives that reveal their lived experiences of trauma, loss and oppression. I argue that these dual and dueling narratives must be understood within the historical context of oppression in the homeland, and also as the product of the repressive patriarchal framework that silences the feminine, essentially writing Iraqi women and their experiences out of Iraqi history. The narratives of women from various class, ethnic and religious backgrounds reveal their experiences of life during the authoritarian Ba‘th regime, as well as how and why they came to settle in North America. The dissertation highlights the importance of empowering these voices, and listening to them alongside the official and imposed national commemoration of Iraq’s past. The dissertation engages with religion as a central and organizing category in the lives of Iraqi women. Drawing from the works of western and Third World feminists, it explores the role of religiosity in the lives of multi-generational Iraqi women. In particular, I examine ideas of ‘honour’ and modesty, and the performance of religion amongst young women growing up in North America.Ph