Belonging, desire, and queer Iranian diasporic politics

Recent approaches to the study of queer migration politics and diaspora hold significant potential in advancing the study of the geographies of migration. Most notably, they can help illuminate the impossible positions that migrants often occupy; challenge diasporic norms governing cultural authenticity; destabilize conventional understandings of gender, nation, and home; and situate diasporic experiences within present and future possibilities for new ways of expressing intimacy and kinship beyond the limited scope of nationality and citizenship. In this paper, I will argue for a queer intervention on migration studies that critically expands geographic approaches to migration by denaturalizing and complicating approaches to understanding the emotional diasporic experiences of belonging and home. I will think through the usefulness of such approaches in my own ongoing research on debates concerning Iranian diasporic identities and communities in Iranian diasporic cinema. In analyzing two recent films, I argue for the tremendous creative potential of diasporic filmmaking in imagining complex spaces of home and belonging that otherwise seem impossible. Ultimately, I see queer approaches to migration politics and diaspora as having significant creative, critical, and positive potential to understanding how migrants placed in impossible situations create new lives for themselves.