Studying Social, Economic and Political Challenges and Opportunities of Educated Afghans Living in Iran

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.