Identity Integration of Afghan Immigrants in Iran: A Grounded Theory Study

Iran has hosted foreign immigrants, mostly Afghans and Iraqis, for the past four decades. The number of Afghan refugees registered by the UN Refugee Agency in 2021, shows that among different countries, Iran is the second destination of Afghan refugees after Pakistan. One of the key aspects of immigrants' lives that changes in the context of life and residence in the host community is identity. Identity is an important element in the process of immigrant integration, reflecting the sense of belonging or alienation from the culture of host society by the migrant. This paper aims to explore the identity integration among the first- and second-generation Afghan immigrants in Iran.

The research has been conducted within the framework of a constructivist approach and a Grounded Theory research method. The sampling method was purposeful and snowball. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 45 participants in the cities of Yazd and Tehran. The theoretical coding method was used to analyze the research date.

Findings indicate eight main categories including fear of identity expression, Iranian identification, identity concealment, identity crisis, comparison with Iranian peers, sense of belonging to ethnic identity, and comparison with Afghan peers were extracted. By summarizing the main categories, "identity purgatory" was obtained as the final core category.

According to the results of our field study, it can be concluded that the process of identity integration is not an intergenerational process for Afghan migrants, but it depends mainly on how migrants form their interpersonal interactions at the micro, intermediate and macro levels. Another challenge for immigrants is that they are unable to develop their different social identities in a way that allows them to affirm both their own ethnic as well as destination national identities.