Mother+Africa

= **IRAN** =



Iran has captured the world's attention. The hard-liner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the international community's subsequent focus on a nuclear weapons program, combined with the country's involvement in the ongoing crises in the Middle East, have all contributed to keeping Iran firmly in the spotlight. Although Iran has been seemingly isolated from much of the outside world since the Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979, its borders have by no means been closed. To the contrary, the country has produced and hosted abundant flows of emigration and immigration, a steady coming and going mainly driven by key political events. However, what makes Iran's migration story unique is that it has experienced simultaneous emigration and immigration to extreme degrees. In its recent history, Iran has laid claim to producting the highest rates of brain drain in the world while simultaneously topping the list as the world's largest refugee haven, mainly for Afghans and Iraqis. Iran also exhibits one of the steepest urban growth rates in the world, largely driven by internal migration from rural areas.



Indo-European Aryan tribes and the Medes ruled the region from Pakistan to the Aegean coast of Turkey from 648 BC until the fourth century BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Persia. Other invaders — the Greeks, Arabs, Mongols , and Turks — followed, each leaving their mark on Persian culture through their philosophical, artistic, scientific, and religious contributions. This mosaic of diverse ethnic groups is still visible in Iran today, where Persians compose only 51 percent of the population. Other groups include the Azeris (24 percent), Gilaki and Mazandaranis (eight percent) , Kurds (seven percent) , Arabs (three percent) , Lurs (two percent) , Baluchs (two percent) , and Turkmens (two percent).
 * A bridge in both the geographical and cultural sense of the word, Persia (Iran's name until 1934 when it was changed as part of Reza Shah's modernization efforts), has long connected the great civilizations of Asia, the Near East and the Mediterranean, helping to lay the foundations of the modern world ||



Emigration since 1950 can be organized into three major waves that roughly correspond to socioeconomic status and motivations for migration, including both forced and voluntary departures. Despite some degree of overlap, the three phases provide a framework for conceptualizing the global Iranian diaspora. The first significant phase of emigration from Iran, beginning in 1950 and lasting until the 1979 revolution, was triggered by Iran’s slow economic recovery and resumption of oil production after World War II. Revenue from oil exports permitted a relatively sudden change in Iranian society from traditionalism to modernization, motivating middle- and upper-class families to send their children abroad for higher education as a means of ensuring socioeconomic security and political access upon return. In the 1977-1978 academic year, about 100,000 Iranians were studying abroad, of whom 36,220 were enrolled in US institutes of higher learning; the rest were mainly in the United Kingdom, West Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. In the 1978-1979 academic year, the number of Iranian students enrolled in the United States totaled 45,340, peaking at 51,310 in 1979-1980. According to the Institute of International Education, more Iranian students studied in the United States at this time than students from any other country. After the revolution, not only did many of these students opt to remain in the West, but many of their relatives joined them. Also included in this first period were families closely associated with the monarchy as members of the government, military personnel, or bankers. These royalist sympathizers fled during the early stages of the revolution, often with significant liquidated assets in hand. Finally, another population that fled in the initial phase were members of religious minorities, such as the Baha'is, and religio-ethnic groups, such as the Jews, Armenians, and Assyrians. Anticipating persecution, a disproportionate number of these marginalized populations left as soon as cracks appeared in the Pahlavi regime. A second phase of emigration took place after the revolution. Socialist and liberal elements were the first to leave, followed by young men who fled military service and the Iran-Iraq War, followed by young women and families, escaping overly confining gender restrictions. Having a daughter was a decisive factor in a family's decision to flee since the post-revolution era forced women to wear the veil, offered decreased educational possibilities, and enforced obedience to male kin. Because the second wave included large numbers of professionals, entrepreneurs, and academics, it accelerated the "brain drain," a term used to describe the emigration of a country's most educated and highly skilled for better opportunities in another country. According to the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education, right before the revolution and subsequent closure of all the universities in 1980, there were 16,222 professors teaching in Iran's higher education institutions. When the universities reopened in 1982, this figure had plummeted to 9,042. Similarly, the //Iran Times// estimated that one out of every three (5,000) physicians and dentists left after the revolution. In addition to the reduction of manpower, studies estimate that the flight of capital from Iran shortly before and after the revolution is in the range of $30 to $40 billion. It is important to note that many members of both the first and second emigration waves did not consider their departure permanent. To the contrary, many locked up their homes, packed a few suitcases, and viewed leaving as a temporary sojourn from their lives back in Iran, which would resume when the revolutionary government was overturned. However, with time, the possibility of a permanent return has grown increasingly unlikely. Finally, a more recent third wave of emigration has surfaced over the last decade, from roughly 1995 to the present. This wave consists of two very distinct populations — highly skilled individuals leaving universities and research institutions, a continuation of a previous trend, and working-class labor migrants and economic refugees, sometimes with lower education levels and less transferable skills than previous emigrants. In the year 2000 alone, Iranians submitted 34,343 asylum applications, the highest rate since 1986. Unlike the two previous waves, this wave was caused by Iran's economic crisis, deteriorating human rights record, diminishing opportunities, and the enduring tension between reformist and conservative factions. While some manage to leave the country through illegal methods, such as being smuggled across the Turkish border, other asylees have adopted less common approaches such as converting to Christianity, fleeing Iran as a refugee, and then legitimizing an asylum application by explaining that conversion from Islam is considered an act of apostasy and punishable according to the Islamic Republic. At the end of 2005, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated there were 111,684 refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other persons of concern from Iran. The countries hosting the largest populations of Iranian refugees were Germany (39,904), the United States (20,541), Iraq (9,500), the United Kingdom (8,044), the Netherlands (6,597), and Canada (6,508). The distinctive characteristic of this wave is the rise of asylum applications lodged in Europe. In 2004, Iran ranked tenth among the top countries of origin for asylum seekers across Europe. Fifty-five percent of the total Iranian asylum applications in 2000 were submitted in Western European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands. In 2001 alone, there was a 300 percent increase in the number of Iranians seeking asylum in Britain. Furthermore, in 2004, Iran was the top nationality of asylum seekers to the UK, accounting for 10 percent of all applications. Preliminary observations indicate that these migrants often come from smaller provinces outside of Tehran and that they often face greater obstacles to integration in their host societies, especially in comparison to the relative successes of their more urban predecessors in those same countries. Given that European Union countries have made it difficult to obtain asylum, Iranians who are not recognized as refugees often go to another country, remain illegally in the country where they applied, or return to Iran.