Read Part I: The Devaluation of Afghan Migrants’ Human Dignity under the Islamic Republic of Iran
Read Part II:The Devaluation of Afghan Migrants’ Human Dignity under the Islamic Republic of Iran
“When it comes to labor, Afghans are assigned the jobs that Iranians would never accept—work so dirty and grueling that no one else is willing to do it: sewage, canals, garbage collection. They have a code called ‘Sana’ that’s only issued to those with valid legal documents. If you have that code, you can file a complaint, for instance. Without it, undocumented migrants are systemically unable even to lodge a grievance, let alone have it addressed. I witnessed a case where a migrant worker died in a workplace accident. After they informed the company director, he didn’t even bother to turn off his equipment. He dragged the body aside with total indifference and said, ‘I’ll call his family tonight to come and take him away.’ Then he warned the others: ‘If anyone tries to stop work because of this, you’re fired.’”*
(Karim)
Until very recently, Afghan migrants in Iran were legally prohibited from working in certain occupations (Human Rights Watch). Only now are some being issued what is called a “work card.” But the issue is not simply about halting operations after a fatal incident or about why only Afghans are relegated to the dirtiest of jobs while being barred from others. Nor is it only about employers’ callousness, the absence of preventative safety measures, wage theft, or exploitative working conditions—although these are serious in their own right. The deeper issue lies in the systematic degradation of the dignity, self-worth, and human status of an entire social group. What demands our attention is the sustained, normalized dehumanization of Afghan migrants—whether by the state or, at times, by ordinary people. From narratives like Karim’s, many significant and contentious themes can be extracted. But the principal concern here is the erasure of human dignity and the near-total absence of respect for Afghan migrants within the Iranian political and social imagination. What renders the situation especially harrowing is the extent to which Afghan migrants have been turned into voiceless, rightsless, and disposable bodies in the public and political consciousness of Iran.
Karim adds: “Another issue is that when [Iranians] say ‘tabe’eh’—‘foreign national’—they mean only Afghans. Migrants from countries like Iraq are never referred to as tabe’eh. Only Afghans—or, as they derogatorily call us, ‘afee’.” It is important to clarify something that Karim alludes to: in Iranian discourse, when people say “Afghan,” they often implicitly mean Hazara. In contemporary Iran, it is the Hazara face that has come to represent the label “Afghan”—and all the historical weight, stigma, and pejorative meaning attached to that term. Pashtuns or Tajiks from Afghanistan, whose appearance closely resembles that of many Iranians, can often pass unnoticed unless their accent or documents betray them. But Hazaras, because of their distinct Mongoloid features, cannot blend in. As a result, the entire burden of accumulated prejudice and historical humiliation embedded in the word “Afghan” is disproportionately borne by Hazara migrants alone.
Karim recounts: “Afghans have to work over fourteen hours a day just to survive, and even then, many don’t receive their wages. Another issue is the banking system and mobile SIM cards. For example, not long ago, half a million Afghan-owned SIM cards were suddenly deactivated without any warning. Then there’s the endless sale of ID codes to migrants under all sorts of pretexts. They just want to extract money from migrants, however they can.” This is the story of millions of Afghan migrants in Iran who are deprived of even the most basic protections under human rights law. They work without pay. They’re denied the right to file complaints. They’re given residency documents, but those same documents become meaningless when they are identified as “Afghan.” They are stripped of control over their phones and private photos. If they protest, they’re slapped on the spot. In detention centers, 2,000 people are crammed into 100-square-meter halls, gasping for breath near the only toilet just to avoid suffocating. When they die, their bodies are dragged away disrespectfully, simply to prevent disruption to operations. Because they are migrants, they are not only beaten—they are mocked and humiliated with deliberate, degrading gestures. A bottle of water in the camp is sold to them at a hundred times its usual price. They perform the dirtiest and most grueling labor for over fourteen hours a day, but are not allowed to own a bank account. They cannot even have a personal SIM card to contact family and friends. This is what the term Afghan has come to mean in Iran. The invocation of slavery here is intentional, meant to connect the systemic dehumanization of a population to the historical denial of rights and recognition. Beyond mere ethical degradation, terms like oppression and injustice take on precise meaning and real substance in the Afghan migrant experience. If universal human rights and global moral norms mean nothing to the Islamic Republic, it cannot so easily evade the religious weight of the words (zulm) and setm—injustice and oppression, which echo throughout Islamic texts. Even outside religious frameworks, basic human conscience resists oppression. While the definition of injustice might differ across ideologies, the practical manifestations must be contextualized in today’s world. If someone clings to outdated concepts of injustice, comparing it to the withholding of dates or camels, they will fail to comprehend the modern reality of the oppressed. Political theorist Iris Marion Young has offered a framework for understanding oppression. She defines injustice as occurring under five key conditions:
1) Exploitation: When the labor or energy of a group benefits others without reciprocal gain.
2) Marginalization: When people are excluded from meaningful participation in social life, typically in the workforce.
3) Powerlessness: When individuals live under authority without autonomy or influence.
4) Cultural imperialism: When a group’s experiences are stereotyped, ignored, or erased, with few opportunities to speak for themselves.
5) Violence: When people face random harm driven by hatred or fear of their group. (Young, p. 261) Measured by these standards, Afghan migrants in Iran face all five forms of oppression. Karim’s story is a case in point. This framework also echoes the lived reality of the Hazara people in Afghanistan over the past century, particularly under land-based feudal systems and interethnic hierarchies.
Thus, Afghan migrants are not just stateless, homeless, or undocumented—they are denied the right to work fairly, to benefit from their labor, to participate in society or politics, to share power, to speak publicly about their condition, to file grievances, or even to have the “right to have rights,” as Hannah Arendt famously put it (Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 296). Their exclusion raises not just moral alarms, but deep philosophical questions: Can we meaningfully speak of human dignity when a group is stripped of the conditions that define humanity? In philosophy—particularly in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Arendt, and others—a person is fully human not by anatomy alone but by being part of the political community, enjoying its rights and responsibilities. Afghan migrants in Iran, however, are treated in a way that denies them even basic human rights, let alone a role in political life. If we cannot address this core question here, we must at least point toward its solution: Why do migrants exist at all? Why aren’t all people citizens? What is the origin of this citizen–migrant divide? The root of the migrant’s legal exclusion lies in the absence of citizenship—and with it, the absence of state protection. In principle, migrants should be able to regain lost citizenship in their host country. But when that host society does not respect global moral values or human rights, these migrants are forever denied their second citizenship—and with it, all their rights. This is the core of the problem: statelessness. And as Arendt explains in The Origins of Totalitarianism, this condition is a direct consequence of the modern state system. The modern state is a necessary and even noble idea. But by creating legal belonging, it also creates exclusion. Under normal conditions, no institution protects people better than the state. But in extraordinary situations—such as forced migration—it can also become an engine of cruelty, instantly stripping specific groups of all protections. In failed or authoritarian states like Afghanistan, the state does not uphold rights fairly, forcing people to flee. But in destination countries like Iran, which also reject modern moral principles, refugees are again denied citizenship—and thus, all human and civil rights. So, what is the way forward? Either each state must become an ideal government where no one is forced to migrate, or a global state must emerge where everyone is a citizen of the world rather than of a specific nation. Both solutions, however, are practically impossible. The alternative is a global agreement on specific issues, such as migration, that transcends differences in constitutions, legal systems, and governance. Stateless people lack the power to defend their rights. To fill this void and restore these rights, a binding international agreement is essential (Arendt, p. 365). That is why treaties on human rights and migrant rights are not luxuries but necessities. Countries must be held accountable for such agreements. We cannot excuse someone’s oppression by saying they’re not a citizen, and then explain their lack of citizenship by saying they’re a migrant. This circular logic is meaningless. A person who once had citizenship and rights in their homeland must be guaranteed the same rights wherever they are. The heavy toll of exclusion cannot be explained away by migration or non-citizenship. The real issue is not the cause of migration, or whether the term “migrant” has any legal weight. What matters is that, in the modern world, every human being must be treated as free, autonomous, equal, and worthy of their inalienable rights. Human dignity does not derive from citizenship, ethnicity, geography, or culture, but from our shared humanity.
In the end, what has been said is not merely a litany of suffering—it is a reminder of a broader forgetting: the fact that countless human beings are stripped of moral and legal status not for any crime, but simply for being displaced, undocumented, and stateless. The Islamic Republic of Iran may not officially endorse slavery, but its treatment of Afghan migrants bears a disturbing resemblance to it. This reality should disturb not only Iran’s conscience, but that of the world. Because what Iran has produced—from its labor markets to its refugee camps—is not merely the migrant worker, but the person without the right to have rights. Under every administration and political climate, the Afghan migrant in Iran has been deprived of both the right to migration and the right to be human. If philosophy still matters, if ethics still speak, if justice remains a dream worth pursuing—then let the world turn its full attention to the existential plight of these people, whose lives, and whose human dignity, are being destroyed not just daily, but moment by moment.
References
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford University Press, 1998.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt, 1973.
Aristotle. Politics. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve, Hackett Publishing, 1998.
Barfield, Thomas. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Princeton University Press, 2010.
Human Rights Watch. Iran: Afghan Refugees and Migrants Face Abuses. 2022. www.hrw.org.
Levi, Primo. If This Is a Man. Translated by Stuart Woolf, Abacus, 1987.
Plato. Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube, revised by C. D. C. Reeve, Hackett Publishing, 1992.
United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1948. www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights.
Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press, 1990.
Read Part I: The Devaluation of Afghan Migrants’ Human Dignity under the Islamic Republic of Iran
Read Part II: The Devaluation of Afghan Migrants’ Human Dignity under the Islamic Republic of Iran
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
بخش سوم و پایانی – تنزیل حیثیت انسانی مهاجر افغانستانی در جمهوری اسلامی
