Introduction
A branch of postcolonial studies is known as migration or diaspora studies. Migration is central to postcolonial debates because it concerns people who cross borders and thereby question essentialist conceptions of identity and the binary oppositions—self/other, West/East, white/black, civilized/primitive, center/periphery, homeland/foreign land—and other oppositions that have historically underpinned colonialism. Prominent postcolonial theorists such as Homi K. Bhabha, Edward Said, and Paul Gilroy have attached particular importance to migration. On their view, the migrant, by being situated within a foreign culture, forms a hybrid identity that can challenge racial claims such as racial purity and the superiority of one race or nation over another, as well as traditional Western views of identity more generally, and can serve as a force for change and resistance against racist and extreme nationalist ideologies.
Among postcolonial thinkers, Bhabha has theorized most extensively the formation of hybrid identity, its importance, and its anti-colonial capacities. Drawing on poststructuralist thinkers such as Derrida and Lacan, he conceptualizes migrant identity as a translational and liminal process and argues that the hybrid subject, by occupying an in-between space, can challenge fixed notions of culture and history and thereby subvert colonial authority. However, his theories have faced serious criticism from numerous scholars, mainly for being abstract and for neglecting the material and structural realities of migration. Critics such as Aijaz Ahmad, Ania Loomba, Benita Parry, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that Bhabha’s model overlooks unequal power structures, class differences, gender dynamics, and the deeply rooted sense of national and cultural identity that shape migrants’ actual experiences. They further argue that what Bhabha celebrates as subversive hybridity may in fact be complicit with new forms of global imperialism and capitalist hegemony.

Keyvan Arzāghi’s novel Sarzamin-e Noutch, one of the successful and realistic works in the field of migration literature, provides a suitable ground for practically assessing this theory and the critiques leveled against it. In academic research, a theorist’s views are usually explained first and then used to analyze a social phenomenon, whether real or fictional. Bhabha’s views on hybrid identity have been widely received in Iranian academia, especially in English literature, and researchers often use them easily to analyze works related to migration. As will be discussed in the literature review, Sarzamin-e Noutch has also been examined from this perspective. The problem of the present study, however, is that Bhabha’s poststructuralist views do not align with the realities of migration, and his claim about the anti-colonial capacities of migrants’ hybrid identity is unfounded. Thus, although these views may appear coherent at the theoretical level, they do not correspond to reality at the practical level. To demonstrate this, the characters of the novel and their identity transformations after migration are examined closely in order to confirm the critiques leveled against.

Materials and Methods
This research is a qualitative, library-based study that utilizes a descriptive-analytical approach. Its theoretical framework rests on Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybrid identity and the critiques leveled against it. The novel Sarzamin-e Nūch is used as a case for assessing the theory’s explanatory power, not as a source for deriving theory or as field evidence. The framework has three layers. First, it explains Bhabha’s hybrid identity, including his notions of translational experience and the Third Space, where the migrant is seen as occupying a creative in-between position capable of resisting cultural hegemony. Second, it reviews critiques by Marxist, postcolonial, and materialist scholars—such as Ahmad, Loomba, Parry, and Hardt and Negri—who fault the theory for neglecting material structures, class, gender, race, and national identity, and for mistaking a product of global imperialism for an anti-colonial agency. Third, it presents realist migration theories and empirical studies that emphasize adaptation, structural constraints, and gradual identity change. Domestic studies on migrant identity formation indicate that identity change is gradual, generational, language-dependent, and shaped by host structures rather than by creative in-between agency. Methodologically, the study uses qualitative content analysis of the novel’s text. Drawing on the sociology of literature, it treats the realist novel as a valid complementary document for sociological analysis, following criteria concerning authorial intention, genre, audience, purpose, and historical-social context. This framework provides methodological legitimacy for analyzing the novel as a representation of lived migration experience rather than merely fiction. The primary data are solely the text of Keyvan Arzāqī’s Sarzamin-e Nūch (1401); all textual evidence and character references are drawn from it. No field data, interviews, surveys, or observations are used.

Discussion and Results
This study reveals a significant and consistent gap between Bhabha’s theoretical propositions and the realities depicted in the novel, and the findings challenge the core tenets of his theory across several dimensions. Taken together, the analysis of the characters’ material conditions, identities, and social positions supports the major critiques leveled against Bhabha’s model of hybridity.

First, the novel’s representation of migration foregrounds material conditions that Bhabha’s model largely ignores. Ārash and Sanam leave Iran primarily because of economic dissatisfaction and the pursuit of a better life, a motivation rooted in material need rather than in a postcolonial desire to subvert hegemony. Upon arrival in the United States, they are immediately absorbed into a demanding capitalist structure, working long hours simply to repay debts and secure basic necessities. Their conversations show that their lives are governed by financial pressure and the struggle to make ends meet. Even seemingly successful characters such as Bahādor and Emād are depicted as structurally marginalized: their labor and taxes sustain a system over which they have no control, contradicting any notion of empowered agency. Emād explicitly warns that “we will never own a house in this country. Never,” highlighting the perpetual insecurity that undercuts the supposed liberating potential of hybrid identity. These experiences confirm the materialist critiques of Aijaz Ahmad and Ania Loomba, showing that an abstract, poststructuralist framework fails to account for socio-economic pressures, unequal power structures, gender dynamics, and the decisive role of national and cultural consciousness. Ahmad’s argument that discussions of hybrid agency are meaningless while a continent like Africa remains mired in economic and social crisis is mirrored in the novel by Iranian migrants who are forced into a system that exploits their labor and marginalizes their voices.
Second, the analysis of the protagonists’ identities demonstrates that neither achieves the creative, balanced “hybridity” Bhabha describes. Sanam, who initially seeks liberation from the restrictions she faced in Iran regarding dress and social behavior, becomes increasingly assimilated into dominant American culture. She gradually abandons her native language, severs emotional ties with her family, and adopts a consumerist, self-centered lifestyle. Her transformation is not a successful synthesis but a one-sided assimilation that leads to alienation from her husband, her heritage, and her own emotional self. Her experience is further complicated by gender-specific pressures; as a woman, she faces a double bind—feeling limited in her home country and compelled to conform to a new set of norms in the host country in order to gain acceptance. This trajectory affirms Loomba’s critique that Bhabha neglects important differences such as gender, class, and race. Sanam’s experience as a woman migrant shows that migration is not uniform and that identity formation is deeply mediated by such factors; her assimilation is not a free choice but the result of a system that offers her freedom only on its own terms. By contrast, her husband Ārash’s resistance to American culture is rooted in a deep historical and national consciousness. His conscious rejection of American materialism and his insistence on his Iranian roots show that his historical and national awareness is the very source of his resistance. His ultimate decision to return to Iran is not a defeat but a deliberate political and cultural choice, providing compelling support for Benita Parry’s argument that successful anti-colonial movements have historically been rooted in national and ethnic identity. This decision also suggests that the subversive agency Bhabha attributes to hybridity may, in fact, be found in a reaffirmation of national identity.
Third, the study finds that Bhabha’s “Third Space” fails to materialize as a site of creative agency. The secondary characters—Emād, Bahādor, and Houman—appear to have integrated into American society while maintaining some connection to Iranian culture, but all are shown to be deeply compromised. Emād, despite his apparent success, reveals that he had to change his religion to obtain a Green Card. Bahādor, a successful businessman, is consumed by regret for missed family events and suffers an unhappy, failing marriage. Houman, though superficially content, displays a passive and conformist attitude and offers no critical perspective on the dominant culture. These characters are trapped in a state of perpetual marginalization, their lives marked by loss and compromise rather than creative empowerment. Their presence validates the critiques of materialist scholars who argue that this form of hybridity is merely a symptom of, and complicit with, the pressures of global capitalism. More specifically, their compromised lives align with the arguments of Hardt and Negri, and of Dirlik, who contend that what Bhabha celebrates as hybridity is actually the most suitable instrument for contemporary cultural imperialism and globalization. The characters’ superficial integration into American life, their acceptance of its economic norms, and their resulting spiritual emptiness show that their ‘hybridity’ does not challenge the dominant order but serves to sustain it.
Conclusion
This study concludes that Homi Bhabha's theory of hybrid identity, despite its theoretical elegance, proves to be largely inadequate for explaining the concrete realities of migration as represented in a realist literary work like Sarzamin-e Noutch. The novel demonstrates that the abstract, poststructuralist framework fails to account for critical factors such as socio-economic pressures, unequal power structures, gender dynamics, and the decisive role of national and cultural consciousness in shaping migrant identity. The characters in the novel do not find a liberating, creative "Third Space." Instead, they either assimilate into the dominant culture, are crushed by its structural pressures, or, like Ārash, actively resist by reclaiming their national identity and returning home. The research affirms the critiques of scholars like Ahmad, Loomba, and Parry, showing that Bhabha's model is divorced from the material and political realities of migration. The outcomes experienced by the characters are not instances of anti-colonial agency but are more accurately described as the reproduction of the hegemonic power relations that Bhabha claims to deconstruct. This study ultimately suggests that a critical, comparative examination of migrant literature with postcolonial theory not only highlights the weaknesses of abstract theoretical models but also serves as a crucial step towards developing more grounded and context-specific analytical frameworks for understanding the complexities of Iranian migrant identities in contemporary fiction