IRANIAN IMMIGRANTS’ LIVING CONDITION IN RUSSIA AND TURKEY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

COVID-19 has emerged in a world tightly related to local and international population movements. International migrants are a group of very vulnerable people who are directly and indirectly affected by Covid-19. They face additional barriers rather than the locals, such as language barrier, border closure, visa barrier, etc. The aim of this article is to discuss impacts of Coronavirus COVID-19 on Iranian immigrants’ lives in Russia and Turkey. The 1979 Islamic Revolution led to unprecedented numbers of Iranians leaving their home country. Although many Iranian have immigrated to both countries in the last decades, the forms and patterns of migration of Iranians to these two countries are different. And Turkey has been one of the main countries of destination for Iranian immigrants and it also acted as a transit country for Iranian refugees that left Turkey to Europe. And Russia on the other hand, in the last years, hosts Iranian students who form the most number of immigrants in this country. The qualitative approach, grounded theory is used in this research. We interviewed four Iranian immigrants in Russia and three Iranian immigrants in Turkey online in platform zoom in the Persian language, the age range of our interviewees was from 18-35 years old, two of the interviewees were women and five men. Findings in this study show that language barrier, financial instability, access to information, and in some cases discriminations have been the most important problems that Iranians faced during the pandemic in these two countries. However, they believe that the two countries were quite successful in adapting themselves to the new pattern of life.

The comparative analysis of life satisfaction among Syrian, Iranian, and Afghan refugees in Turkey: The case of Denizli

In this study, the survey method was used to analyse the life satisfaction of three different refugee groups that are Syrian, Iranian, and Afghan who lives in the Denizli province of Turkey. According to the outcomes of in-depth interviews and surveys conducted on 150 refugees, the most common reason for immigrating to Turkey is the civil war-factor. The survey results show that the Afghan refugees’ level of income increased compared to that of before immigration. Afghan and Syrian refugees are more satisfied with their lives in Turkey compared to Iranian immigrants. Besides, uneducated and male refugees, living in a country with the same religion as the departure country are more satisfied than other immigrants. Therefore Iranian immigrants, most of whom are not Muslim, are planning to migrate again from Turkey to more advanced economies. In sum, the results of this study indicate that the major factors affecting life satisfaction of immigrants are educational status, religion, gender, and income.

A Socio-pragmatic Perspective of Spanish and Persian Greeting

Due to an increasing number of migration of Iranians to Spain and language and cultural problems they might face in the new society, a model of socio-pragmatic contrastive analysis was used with the intention of comparing the Spanish and Persian verbal and nonverbal greeting forms with the aim of helping Iranian immigrant in Spain for having a better understanding of cultural differences in greeting forms. In this study, the naturalistic context was used for both Spanish and Persian forms of greeting. This study shows two Spanish and two Persian patterns for greetings to show the differences and similarities between Persian and Spanish greeting to be a help for Iranian immigrants who are newcomers in Spain to be able to adapt themselves to Spanish culture which greeting is a part of it.

The Gothenburg International Exile Film Festival in Context

This chapter explores how in 1993 two Iranian immigrants to Sweden, Hossein Mahini and Hassan Mahini, launched a film festival in Sweden’s second largest city Gothenburg for films related to exile and refugee experiences, the Exile Film Festival. The programming of the festival represents the large range of exilic, diasporic, ethnic, immigrant, and refugee communities that are part of the contemporary public sphere. The festival also constitutes an overlooked elsewhere of cinematic programming outside of the main commercial, art house, or mainstream film festivals. It is also part of local, national, and international “ecology” of exhibition of non-Western films in general, and exile or diaspora film festivals in particular, including through the festival’s intervention into Gothenburg suburbs that rarely otherwise see this kind of cinematic programming. The chapter also discusses exilic cinephilia cultures in Sweden and the kinds of films that are screened at the festival. By so doing, it introduces a range of cinematic elsewhere.

The Effects of Cultural Background and Past Usage on Iranian- Australians’ Appreciation of Urban Parks and Aesthetic Preferences

To understand how newcomers and established immigrants perceive cultural landscapes that have been imbued with a nationality’s cultural meanings and heritage, exploring the cultural background and landscape myths and values of that immigrants’ community can be a starting point. Examining whether immigrants perceive or prefer those values in a new landscape setting requires a wider understanding of immigrants’ activities, preferences, and expectations.The present paper aims to investigate how Australian urban park landscape settings may be perceived by Iranian immigrants in terms of having aesthetic attributes, and how they use these spaces. It approaches the issue of immigration and park experiences through seeking the links between park settings and the way immigrants see and interpret them based on their cultural, social, and geographical backgrounds. It particularly focuses on Iranian immigrants and Iran’s cultural landscape to explore different views of constructed natural landscapes and their effects on park usage and aesthetic preferences. This study explores how the icons of Iranian cultural landscape (Persian garden), urban park design, and past park use patterns of these immigrants may mediate interactions with new park environments, and how they may contribute to evoke a ‘sense of aesthetic’. It applies survey questionnaire, semi-structured indepth individual interview, and Q methodology with photographs as research methods, and employs theories of ‘place’ and ‘landscape visual characters’ to explore park usage and aesthetic preferences in both contexts: Iran and Australia.Findings of this study highlight the preference of undertaking ‘passive activities’ in urban park landscapes by Iranian research participants and demonstrate that they highly admire the aesthetic and picturesque aspects of Australian park landscapes. However, they miss the characteristics of Iran’s parks as well as the recreational, social, and sporting activities they used to carry out there.

Role of Iranian immigrants in Iran - Russia trade development

Migration and international trade are two important dimensions of globalization. Migration plays an important role in development of countries. Immigrants send their remittances, ideas, innovation and investments to their home countries. Migrants can influence on countries’ trade, they are able to decrease the transactional costs for companies willing to trade. In this article has been tried to study the case of Iranian immigrants in Russia. We can see that Iranians have migrated mostly to developed countries such as USA, Europe, Australia, Canada and part of them have migrated to the Persian Gulf countries. And of course many of these immigrants have high levels of economic, human, social, and cultural potential, which can be used for social and economic development of the country. Iranians have migrated to two kinds of countries. First, those who are developed and second those with high income which have the potential of trade with Iran. When we look at these two groups they either migrated to American and European countries, which this group has a high educated and human capital background or they migrated to neighbor Persian Gulf countries that they have mostly strong economic backgrounds which increased the chance of trade. In this article Iranian businessmen have been interviewed and they have explained their roles in trade, and if they had any advantages in comparison with those in the home country.