Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Saeed Isazadeh ¹
• Ezatollah Abbasian ²
• Ahmad zia Noori ³

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Bu Ali Sina University, Hamadan, Iran

² Associate Professor, Department of Public Management, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

³ M.A. Economics, Bu Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran.

Abstract

Afghanistan is a country having the most refugees in the world. The existence of a long common border and linguistic, religious and cultural similarities between Afghanistan and Iran has created a situation in which the vast majority of Afghan immigrants (43 %) stay in the Iran. After taking up the process of the voluntary return of Afghan refugees with the UNHCR program, 6.2 million people have returned to the home country since 2002. This study is going to use questionnaire data to examine the impact of immigration to Iran on the education and skills of Afghan labor force during the period of 2002-2017. The research results indicate that immigration to Iran has a positive and significant effect on education and skills of Afghan labor force. Besides, the acquired skills, the level of immigrant literacy, the opportunities for education and skills, the type of profession and the duration of their stay in Iran have a significant effect on the employment rate of returning persons. Also, there are significant relationships between: 1) the type of immigrant profession and income, 2) the legality of the immigration process and the opportunities for education and skills in Iran. It also shows that immigration for migrant households is profitable and they are satisfied with immigration to Iran. Hence their satisfaction leads to immigrate again.

Keywords

• Immigrant Worker
• Education
• Skills
• Employment of Immigrants