Abstract
Based on my psychosocial research results, this chapter sets out the central argument of the book, which suggest there are multilayered losses borne by middle-class professional Iranian migrants who left Iran after the Revolution of 1979, creating ‘brain drain’. Losses in Iran included loss of: country, plans/hopes for the future and secular ways of thinking and being. In London, there has been the gain of basic rights, but loss of economic, social, cultural and familial capital. For these migrants, there is the paradoxical situation of Iran being ‘there’ and desired, at the same time as being lost to them. The process of ‘mourning’ in the psychoanalytic sense remains ongoing and there is encapsulated sadness.
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Notes
- 1.
Migrant refers to the ‘voluntary’ and exile to the ‘enforced’ nature of movement.
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Sekechi, M. (2018). Introduction. In: Iranians in London. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-79023-7_1
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