This article presents an analytical study of the changing concepts of sexuality and gender relations among Iranian immigrants in Canada. I explore the ways in which spatial displacement transformed gender relations and sexuality. The impact of migration on gender is mediated through both class and gender relations. Migration effects profound changes in the compact between men and women. One fundamental change in gender and sexuality is the emphasis on individuality, which even among upper-middle-class families creates discrepancies between real and ideal behavior. Immigrant communities are constructed based on a reservoir of cultural and social patterns ‘transported’ from home. Yet neither the ethnic community nor the host community is all-constitutive or all-restrictive. Men and women construct and contest gender and sexuality through a critical reappropriation of their ‘past’ and a creative redefinition of what is available to them by selective mix and match of ‘traditional’ norms and values with ‘modern’ options.
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