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With reference to postcolonial intersectional scholarship, this article examines working life narratives of Iranian immigrant women before and after migration to Norway in relation to questions of equality along gender and racial lines. This interview-based study asks, 'How do Iranian immigrant women who have resettled in Norway narrate their work experiences in their home and host countries, and how does this inform us about processes of othering and discrimination in both contexts?' To what extent these othering processes can be understood in terms of the intersectional dimensions of gender and race. The study shows that although the move from a state considered repressive to one considered a model of gender equality entails positive experiences at work along gendered lines, these positive experiences are often encountered by the processes of racial and ethnic sorting, thus leading to distress and alienation. Accordingly, the interviews show a nuanced picture of working life in both countries, with both positive and negative stories of work in each context. Overall, the paper addresses a need to move beyond reductionist interpretations of migration that portrays immigration to the West as an unproblematic journey towards a better life in the accounts of immigrants coming from the East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, drawing on Butler, Bourdieu, and Foucault, I examine the veil as an embodied and ethical practice. More particularly, I look at the way in which embodied subjectivities are (re)constructed and contested in the process of socio-cultural and political developments. I trace briefly the politics of the veil in the Iranian context during three historical periods. In light of the notion of embodied subjectification, I seek to reveal the meanings that are ascribed to the veil through imperatives enforced by the Iranian state, and highlight the diverse ways in which the women (re)appropriate and subvert veiling practices through ethics and forms of self-constitution. In so doing, I depict the relations of power that the embodied subjectivity of women is dependent upon, and redefine women's subjectivity as their capacity to act in ways that may entail specific relations of subordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]