Volume 7, Issue 4 (2009) Migrating Identities and Perspectives: Latin America and the Caribbean in Local and Global Contexts

Whenever the topic of migration and its studies come up, somehow, as far as I am concerned, the term does not personally ring an identity bell in me immediately. For some reason, the status of being an immigrant to the U.S. does not strike the core of my identity formation and sensibility. I have always wondered why, given that obviously I am, for all practical purposes, an immigrant from another region of the world (Middle East, Iran in particular), having arrived in the U.S. to pursue higher education at the age of eighteen, in 1978, basically on my own, though with financial support from my parents at the time. The term for “migrant” in Persian is “mohajer,” and somehow I have very rarely, if at all, referred to or considered myself as a mohajer. This seems quite puzzling to me, especially in light of the very theme of this issue of Human Architecture focusing on the interplay of migration and identify formation, albeit focusing on a different region of the world, i.e., Latin America and the Caribbean, than the one I come from.