جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « International Migration » در نشریات گروه « علوم سیاسی »

As two neighboring countries, Iran and Afghanistan are affected by each other's political-security, economic and cultural-social developments. The large-scale migration of Afghans to Iran began in the early 1980s due to the Soviet invasion. The first generations of Afghan immigrants were generally concerned about security, survival, work, and daily life, but the new immigrants have more social, scientific, cultural, political, and social concerns. In this regard, an increase in their willingness to educate can be observed. Anyway, these people experience challenges in their own lives and have opportunities as well. The current research seeks to study the challenges and opportunities of Afghan educated people living in Iran. The theoretical lens used has been constructivism. To achieve this goal, the grounded theory method has been used. Using the purposive sampling method, interviews were conducted with 27 Afghan-educated people living in Iran and 22 experts on issues related to Afghan immigrants. The findings show that Afghan educated people face socio-cultural challenges (educational limitations, the experience of humiliation and insult, living with a fear of being powerless, and a negative image), economic (occupational limitations, economic weakness, investment limitations), and political-security (structural discrimination, instability of policies, inefficient laws and polarization of immigrants). On the other hand, In contrast, they have opportunities Including social- cultural (Educational benefit, cultural commonality, self-governing schools, and creation of coordination networks), economic (Iran's welfare level and benefits from defined jobs), and political-security (Iran's security and the opportunity to become a refugee). These challenges and opportunities should be explained in the context of political developments and the Iranian immigration policy system, which is a multi-layered phenomenon.

The paper studies the challenges and opportunities of Afghan migrants in western countries and their impact on their lives.

Grounded theory is the method. Using purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with 15 Afghan migrants residing in western countries that had the experience of living in Iran as well.

Findings show that Afghan migrants face challenges in terms of socio-cultural (a sense of being thrown to the west, language difficulty, cultural differences, nostalgia of the homeland), economic (tax payment and forced labor, migration expenses, troublemaking in Europe), political (anti- migrant groups, insecurity of migration route). They also experience opportunities in terms of socio-cultural (social integration, possibility of progress, the value of ethnic diversity in the west), economic (welfare advantages, optimal working conditions), and political (equal humane rights, citizenship right). The impact of this new situation for migrants is: continuity of communication, weakening inter-ethnic interactions, and financial support for the families.

Despite the satisfaction of Afghan Migrants living in western countries, experience of many challenges and limitations in Iran and identity belonging to Afghanistan, the identity demarcation of Afghan migrants living in western countries can’t be considered as a single layer, but the collective life experience in Iran, Afghanistan and western countries caused that their identity be a combination of societies, they lived in or have belonging to it.

The acceleration of the pace of international migration during the second half of the 20th century, the upsurge in the number of migrants in various countries and the emergence of the phenomenon of Diaspora and its political, social consequences, particularly from the viewpoint of attraction or interaction between ethic and cultural minorities in the dominant culture or nationality, have been the new subjects of sociological studies. The two- to three-million population of Iranian migrants in various parts of the world, particularly in Europe and the United States, will face the positive and negative aspects of migration. The present article is an attempt to study the cultural, social and identity characteristics of the Iranian migrants and also tries to analyze the cultural and identity interaction between the Iranian migrants residing in Germany with the host nationals.