What the Movement of Contraband Western Brand-Name Sneakers in Iran Can Tell Us About Transregional Territorialization

Informed by ethnographic fieldwork in East Kurdistan (Rojhelat, Iranian Kurdistan) and in Tehran on the movement of contraband goods, specifically footwear, this article asks what the movement of contraband goods from Kurdistan to Tehran can tell us about transregional territorialization. Iran’s Kurdish mountains rose to prominence as hubs for contraband mobility in the 2010s, partly due to the intensification of US sanctions on Iran, aiming to isolate it internationally and restrict its participation in global affairs and circulation, leading, among others, to shortages of goods in Iran. However, Kurdish contraband leveraged cross-border relations (kinship and otherwise) to sustain Iranian links to global markets and enhance the Iranian economy’s connectivities with those in the region and beyond. Washington’s sanctions extend US sovereign power beyond its territory by leveraging extraterritorial jurisdiction and third-party compliance. They are part of a longer history of imperialist territorialization rather than an exception to it. They have resulted in conditions in which an anxious, sanctions-entrenched Iranian state tolerates and at times facilitates the cross-border contraband movements of a border(ed)land population in Kurdistan, deprived of other means of subsistence, as well as a form of informal territorialization. The result of these variegated territorializations was that the urban subjects in Iran, including those in upscale northern Tehran, acquired the merchandise they wanted, remaining connected to global flows.