Iranian hospitality, Afghan marginality : spaces of refuge and belonging in the city of Shiraz

Abstract

In Iranian Hospitality, Afghan Marginality, Elisabeth Yarbakhsh unpacks ideas around culture, identity, and the relationship between Iranian citizens and Afghan refugees living in Shiraz, Iran, and surrounding areas. Yarkbakhsh highlights the ways in which shifting policies and practices toward refugees over the past forty years have run parallel to the transitive notions of what it means to be Iranian.Yarkbakhsh exposes the complex interplay of identity and hospitality as it emerges out of variously competing and intersecting Islamic, historical, and literary narratives of Iranian identity, carefully illustrating how these factors circumscribe Afghan refugee life in the city of Shiraz.