Intercultural Communication between Afghans Living in Iran and Iranians Based on the Co-Cultural Theory

The presence of Afghan immigrants in Iran, as the largest ethnicity of immigrants in Iran, goes back to many years ago. Now, a portion of them have children in Iran, and the third generation of these immigrants feels a sense of belonging to Iran as their birthplace. This generation is moving in a direction; in which they are having more demands from society. The commonality of these two nationalities in language, religion, and some of their culture has made the type of social interactions more complicated. Little attention, humiliation, and being looked down upon are the least of the experiences that have exerted damages to these people, which in response, these three generations have chosen different approaches of compromise, conformity, and isolation. In this qualitative study, 20 Afghan immigrants living in Bumehen, near the capital Tehran, are interviewed with the Gudykunst & Orbe’s theoretical framework and their behaviors are analyzed based on the co-cultural theory. The result shows that the third generation of Afghan immigrants, unlike previous generations who traditionally chose the approach of compromise, chooses the conformity approach and sometimes in a more limited manner, they choose the approach of isolation.