Economic Sanctions and Migrants' Human Security: Afghans in Iran

This study explores the life experiences of Afghans in Iran to analyse the impact of multilateral comprehensive sanctions on one of the largest migrant populations in sanctioned countries. It applies a qualitative approach, drawing on 53 semi-structured interviews. It fills a significant gap in the human security literature in relation to the impact of economic sanctions. In sum, findings indicate that the intensified sanctions particularly affected key aspects of middle-class participants’ lives and saw a group of them decline to lower economic status as a result. Therefore, the sanctions caused a general increase in the population of lower economic class.