Immigration and Revolution in Iran: Asylum politics and State Consolidation

Amin Moghadam,Safinaz Jadali

doi:10.1590/1980-85852503880006303

Abstract

Abstract. In May 2019, remarks by the then Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi implying Iran might ask Afghans to leave the country as U.S. sanctions tightened sparked widespread criticism from various segments of Iranian society. Critics from civil society and political factions accused Araghchi of using Afghans as leverage to extract concessions from Europe, and ignoring revolutionary ideals. Drawing on literature emphasising the role of mobilities in shaping the state, we posit that migration politics and related social dynamics are an integral element in state formation in post-revolutionary Iran, offering insights into the nature of Iran’s political system. We argue that the Islamic Republic’s immigration and asylum politics reflect both the revolutionary legacy and a political system striving for normalization, looking at how Iran’s migration regime was formed, encompassing the institutionalization of migration governance, ad hoc policies, migration diplomacy, conflicting political factions, and bottom-up social pressures.

Highlights

Contemporary Iranian history, especially since the 1979 revolution, offers a good vantage point to observe how political and social processes interweave in the gradual shaping of a migration regime
We study asylum and immigration politics under the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) through a triangular prism, where the interdependent processes of post-revolutionary state formation, Iranian diplomacy, and the place the IRI occupies in its regional environment and the world at large, in a widening public space devoted to migration issues, converge
An overview of migration politics in the 1980s shows that post-revolutionary turmoil embroiling bureaucratic institutions, the scarcity of decision-making processes and foreign assistance, and the need to focus on consolidating political power and the war with Iraq, left the government with no option but to allow Afghans to settle in Iran wherever they chose (Nasr Esfahani, Hosseini, 2018)

Summary

Introduction

Contemporary Iranian history, especially since the 1979 revolution, offers a good vantage point to observe how political and social processes interweave in the gradual shaping of a migration regime. Forty years after the revolution, migration, intricately interweaving both immigration to Iran and the emigration of Iranians abroad, is omnipresent in debate and of direct concern to Iran’s political class While this has not necessarily translated into formal migration policies, it illustrates the role migration has played in shaping the Islamic Republic’s institutions from 1979 until today. An overview of migration politics in the 1980s shows that post-revolutionary turmoil embroiling bureaucratic institutions, the scarcity of decision-making processes and foreign assistance, and the need to focus on consolidating political power and the war with Iraq, left the government with no option but to allow Afghans to settle in Iran wherever they chose (Nasr Esfahani, Hosseini, 2018). As we shall see, the revolutionary legacy continues to influence migration policy, as both a source of legitimacy and a political instrument in divergences between opposing factions

Institutionalising Asylum Governance

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A New Place for Afghans in Iranian Society?

Findings

Conclusion