Immigration and the phenomenon of looking at a migrant is largely “angular” from the host community and can be a top-down gaze.
The “weight” of this gaze can also be seen in the eyes of immigrants. A kind of response that can be seen in the face of laborers or the life-style of daily workers.
These points of views are intertwined with deeper issues such as the phenomenon of immigration in the modern world, which has narrowed even tighter and has limited the choices of ones who need to migrate.
Immigrants sometimes give a defensive smile, in return for having a place to live and survive. The situation that the immigrant is entangled in and inevitably experiencing life under the skin of the city.
The frame, which imprisons each of these workers inside, has a wall decree that keeps them hidden from society and out of civilian sight.
As a witness, the fear was felt. Even my impression of this experience was difficult for me, in a similar situation. The fact that any unplanned migration might happen to some of us at some point…
The background of the Afghan refugee presence in Iran is much older than the presence of Middle Eastern immigrants in Western countries; it happened before the February 1979 Iranian revolution.
Throughout these years, Afghans have been digging the Tehran city’s sewage canals, sometimes hiding from the camera, sometimes waving to the lens with a glimpse of hope in their eyes.
In the face of these looks, concerns about marginalization, and problems such as the denial of migrant children in Iranian schools, to the depreciation of wages earned against the dollar (with US sanctions against Iran). The idea of immigrating to the West is amongst these immigrants.
According to a report released by the official authorities till the start of the 2018 US sanctions against Iran, the Afghan population of Iran was 2.4 million. According to the report, more than one million of these people lack legal identity.
