The Challenges of New/Different Intimate and Sexual Attitudes and Practices of Iranian Immigrant Couples Under the Influence of Sociocultural Integration into British Society

In this study, the transformation of attitudes, expectations, and practices regarding immigrants' intimate and sexual lives is explored by applying the assimilation interpretative framework and social-constructionist perspective on gender relations. The former recognises a multipath process and different patterns of immigrants’ integration into the host British society. The latter conceives of intimacy, and sexuality as social phenomena reshaped by the social circumstances of people’s lives in a new diasporic setting. The study is based on 36 semi-structured interviews conducted with married and divorced Iranian men (15) and women (21) in London. As the findings of this study reveal, during their life in the UK, most Iranian immigrants in all socioeconomic strata and both genders have experienced significant changes in their understandings and practices of intimate and sexual relations, although the forms of these transformations differ by gender and class position. The study acknowledges that Western cultural factors, such as fashion, ideas, expectations, and values, can influence Iranian couples' intimate and sexual relations as they undergo sociocultural assimilation into the host society. The study highlights the transformation of gender relationships among Iranian immigrant couples did not follow a uniform direction. The study also shows how traditional religious immigrants, especially women, have been much more affected by the challenges of new/different gender and sexual norms and expectations encountered in the host society, compared with non or less religious, modern liberal couples who arrived in the United Kingdom with a considerable degree of advanced socialisation into modern/Western notions of gender roles and relations.