by Luke Puttock (Student at the University of Sheffield in the module POL244, Spring 2024)
“The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You” is a book written by Dina Nayeri (2020), who emigrated from Iran during the 1980s when she was a young girl. It features mostly anecdotal recollections of her experience of leaving Iran and the numerous places she and her family lived as asylum seekers, and also meditations about life in America after this lived experience as an immigrant. Nayeri also includes stories from migrants she met via working with refugee support systems.
This review will attempt to demonstrate the pertinent links between this book and broad migration discussions, given the intersectionality of subject material between the two. It will also assess the effectiveness of the book in conveying this information.
The two key themes of the book which tie into the course content are the ideas of “forced migration” (specifically driving factors precipitating emigration of a population) and “politics of citizenship (identity, grappling with nationalities and their personal and political implications).
Before delving into these key notions, it is first worth laying down important contextual background. It should firstly be noted that Nayeri’s experience of immigration was not altogether the most common. Although she, and her mother and brother, left Iran for valid fear of their lives due to her mother’s staunch Christianity making them a target of the Islamic Republic, they were able to immigrate to the United States by first flying to Dubai, being transported to an Italian migrant hostel to await confirmation of their refugee status. Most migrants heading for the West from Iran (whose testimonies are recounted in this book) would be forced to leave on foot, crossing through Turkey and entering Europe this way, as there were no visa requirements for Iranian nationals to enter Turkey (Kirişci, 2003: 85). The hostel where Nayeri lived in Italy, Hotel Barba, is mentioned consistently throughout the book, serving as a core memory and ‘liminal space’ for the author (Nayeri, 2020: 74). The lessons learned there would become foundations for valuable insights into life and contribute to her eventually collating migrant testimonies and writing this book. Though still a young girl at the time, this was the place where she reconciled with her fractured family’s condition as refugees, and the implications this would impress on her identity in a new country.
For Nayeri’s family, staying together in Iran would have likely meant imprisonment or death for them. Christianity, specifically her mother’s brazen devotion to it, was the central reason for the family’s emigration from Iran, and the first chapter is devoted to describing how religion forced the family to migrate. The Islamic Government employed the “moral police”, groups charged with upholding a strictly Islamic framework within Iran, which usually meant dismantling underground Christian churches and associations. Nayeri’s mother’s tenacious commitment to her faith put her in the crosshairs of these militias and eventually after being arrested and beaten several times, the final threat of execution was levelled if she “didn’t agree to disclose church secrets”. This prompted their hastened escape from Iran (Nayeri, 2020: 36).
Having been forced to leave their homeland, the Nayeris would eventually find themselves in a migrant hostel in Italy; Hotel Barba. Accommodating asylum seekers fleeing either religious or political persecution, Nayeri describes this centre as a sort of “purgatory”, as opposed to the “hell” of the Moria camp in Greece (Nayeri, 2020: 76). This raises an important point in the migration discussion: the living conditions of refugee camps. According to Ghrainne, a camp can be described as “a temporary space in which individuals receive humanitarian relief and protection until a durable solution can be found to their situation”. In her paper Ghrainne finds that even if a camp’s conditions are deplorable, a migrant’s chances of being moved to a different one are relatively low (Ghrainne, 2020: 25). This causes a lack of hope within the communities, and likely contributes to the hell-like imagery of the Moria camp, as Nayeri describes it’s “raw sewage, midnight wars, 5 hour food lines and shared tents on open soil” (Nayeri, 2020: 76).
Repatriation is a topic which is momentarily mentioned in the book, but which is still worth addressing as it relates to migration studies to a considerable degree. It is normally assumed that when a populace is forcibly exiled or flees out of fear, they may wish to return to their original homeland at some point. However, this voluntary repatriation is not something altogether too common among the Iranian diaspora.
Nayeri’s grandmother for instance “wants nothing to do with Iran” and views going back as “an existential threat”. This relates to Chimni’s idea that the concept of home is fluid and doesn’t always remain where the homeland was (Chimni, 2004: 59). This fluctuation can be due to trauma or simply laying down of new roots in another place. This is somewhat the case for Nayeri who views her daughter as her own special kind of repatriation, as she allows her to connect with her girlhood self, more closely linked to her Iranian identity.
The question of identity with regards to citizenship and nationality is another core tenant of this book and the author’s self-perception.
With regards to Badenhoop’s framework regarding citizenship, Nayeri’s likens it to the third rationality, the “emotional relationship between the individual and the state” (Badenhoop, 2023: 39). She recounts the day she became an American citizen and the reactions of those around her as they were officially sworn in, where a man “raised his fists and thrashed the sky. ‘I AM AMERICAN!’ he shouted into the microphone. ‘FINALLY, I AM AMERICAN!’” (Nayeri, 2020: 168). She describes here a jubilant atmosphere in a football field where the ceremony was held, the crowd “erupted, joining his celebration”. This presentation of the conference of citizenship is in line with Badenhoop’s rationalisation of the “bureaucratic procedure into a Lived, Meaningful Experience” (Badenhoop, 2023: 46-47), wherein governments would dedicate a ceremony for an individual’s naturalisation to commemorate the occasion. States wished to recognise these events and their recipients with the “highest symbolic respect”, and though a ceremony in a football field may seem “naff” (as David Blunkett says to Badenhoop), it nonetheless confers something of the American spirit, and is therefore a fitting setting (Badenhoop, 2023: 47).
Though it is never explicitly mentioned, there are nonetheless some ideas within this book which we can link to Edward Said’s idea of “The Other”, from his book Orientalism. This comes mostly in interactions Nayeri shares with foreigners who know little of the reality of the situation in Iran, or the wider context of the Middle East. Examples of this vary from various times in the author’s life, when children would bully her in the schoolyard using Middle Eastern slanted insults (“They called me cat-eater, terrorist,”). Other times it would be well-meaning but ignorant comments from average Americans: “well, I sure do get it. You came for a better life” (Nayeri, 2020: 14). This latter comment suggests that the broader, uninformed American psyche thinks Iran (and by extension the Middle East) is somehow a place only full of poverty, and that it would only be natural to seek America as a better place. Nayeri is incensed by this remark, remembering how the quality of life in Iran was far more luxurious than that of Oklahoma (“In Isfahan, we had yellow spray roses, a pool”, versus “in Oklahoma we lived in an apartment complex for the destitute and disenfranchised”). When the Americans express this sort of general statement, they are essentially “Othering” that part of the world, putting their American “Self” front and centre, allowing the ignorant stereotype of poverty to become the reality. This sentiment is born of a Western-centric point of view which manifests the divide of “Self” and “Other” (Said 1978: 48). Nayeri summarises this idea elegantly (p171) in saying she was considered “a lesser citizen among Americans who had seen nothing of the world”, which strikes at the hypocrisy and irony of the ignorant American psyche.
Overall, it would be fair to say that Dina Nayeri’s book is a useful tool in the discussion on immigration, successfully conveying key aspects of the experience of immigration. Her combined strength as an evocative writer and her first-hand experience allows her to skilfully recount 5 different real migrant stories as well as her own, which lie parallel with the course content on “citizenship” and “forced migration”.
Being in the book form instead of an academic textbook has its benefits as mentioned above, but the drawbacks are that some terms often go undefined, and the chronological structure is very irregular, making it difficult to read back.
However on the whole the book engage with many tough subjects, and to read them in an emotive and convincing way creates a more rewarding and worthwhile experience compared to reading about the same events in a textbook.
References
Kirişci, K (2003) The Question of Asylum and Illegal Migration in European Union-Turkish Relations, Turkish Studies, 4:1, 79-106, DOI: 10.1080/714005726
Nayeri, D (2020). The Ungrateful Refugee. Catapult.
Ghráinne, B.N (2022). Internally Displaced Persons and International Refugee Law. Oxford University Press.
Badenhoop, E (2023). Calling for the Super Citizen. Springer Nature.
Chimni, B.S. (1999). From Resettlement to Involuntary Repatriation.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.