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“My Body Is Broken Like My Country”: Identity, Nation, and Repatriation among Afghan Refugees in Iran

Iran has one of the world's largest refugee populations, comprised primarily of Afghans and Iraqi Kurds.1 As of 2001, there were approximately 2.5 million Afghan refugees living in Iran. About 1.8 million of those were documented and the rest undocumented. With aggressive repatriation efforts under the supervision of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the Afghan population in Iran in 2004 dropped to around one million documented and another 500,000 undocumented migrant workers.2 Based on ethnographic research among Afghans and low-income Iranians in urban and rural Isfahan, this paper examines how Afghans who access Iran's health services interpret health and family planning education in the face of Iran's repatriation efforts and increased social tension. Further, I investigate divergent views toward Afghan repatriation and notions of home, self, and identity. Ultimately, this paper addresses the various borders—physical, national, ethnic, religious, gendered, urban/rural—and how these borders can be redefined through the refugee experience, leaving hope for the future. 1 UNHCR 2000 Report of the Executive Committee of the Programme of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (New York, 2000). 2Abbasi-Shavazi, D. Glazebrook, G. Jamshidiha, H. Mahmoudian, & R. Sadeghi, “Return to Afghanistan? A Study of Afghans Living in Tehran,” Afghan Research Evaluation Unit (Tehran, 2005). This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0220594, the University of California, San Francisco Academic Senate, and the American Association of Iranian Studies.