Reflexivity the cultural identity of Lak immigrants; a reflection on the customs of mourning

Customs play a prominent role in ethnic identity; because ethnic identity is constructed, revealed and experienced in the context and context of everyday life. Patterns of migration and accompanying social and cultural displacement lead ethnic minority groups to find ways of cultural resettlement in new places. Dealing with the cultural identity status of immigrants by emphasizing the component of customs can help to understand the mechanisms of change in identity, the state of acculturation and identification, rethinking and reconstruction of identity. In this regard the aim of research is to study the cultural identity of Lak immigrants living in Namjo district of Tehran, emphasizing the component of mourning and mourning customs.

This article is done with qualitative method. The studied community includes men and women of the Lak tribe who live in Namjo neighborhood of Tehran. The process of gathering information using the techniques of semi-structured and in-depth interviews continued until the saturation stage and finally reached 17 people who were selected using the snowball method. Thematic analysis method was used for data analysis.

The findings include 24 concepts and 6 main categories of "emphasis on the implementation of customs in the hometown”, “limitation of the conditions of the new environment”, “facilitation of participation”, “compulsion of tradition”, “strengthening solidarity" and "collectivism". From the perspective of the participants, the culture of their ethnic hometown is different from the culture of the host society. Due to being traditional, uniformity and cultural-ethnic similarity of the hometown, the challenge of identity or acculturation was not very important for them before migration and there were only small differences between the generation of parents and the generation of children in the field of choosing identity elements. In fact, with migration and change of location, they have faced ambiguities, doubts, questions and choices in the path of finding identity and belonging to the inherited culture or the culture of the host society. As social activists, they are forced to reflexivity and redefine the traditional components and sources of their identity in many situations.

The local customs and rituals of mourning and wedding as a cultural resource can play an important role in the identification and resettlement of Lak immigrants as a minority group of immigrants in the new environment and like a bridge in a symbolic way to and connect it to the hometown. In addition, reflexivity, commitment and adherence to the components of cultural identity are not the same among immigrants, and it is not possible to see an equal combination among people of the same generation or between two generations. Local-trans local identity is more dominant among the second generation than among the first generation. Although in many cases, the local cultural identity of the second generation may fade and they are not very interested in and adhere to some local customs and traditions, and they do not have much knowledge of Laki's identity; Despite this, they have the feeling of being Laki, and in general, Laki identity is a concept to which they have an emotional attachment.