Diaspora distress: When geopolitical conflict follows immigrant workers into the office

TORONTO: (May 11) Rostam does not sleep through the night anymore. At 2 am, when his phone buzzes, hes awake before the sound finishes. It might be his parents calling from Tehran, on a connection that is unreliable, sporadic and sometimes cut off mid-sentence. He has learned not to miss those calls, because the next one may not come for days.

Rostam is a pseudonym for a participant in our ongoing research study on diaspora workers, but his experience is one that many workers across Canada will recognise.

Rostam checks the news constantly, piecing together what is happening. Since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in late February, the conflict has escalated rapidly. By 4 am, he has been awake for two hours. This is hypervigilance: the body monitoring a threat it cannot act on and refusing to stand down.