Across the border between Iran and Afghanistan, thousands of Afghan migrants are making a choice that speaks to the limits of exile: when poverty abroad becomes more certain than uncertainty at home, people return. Driven out not by hope but by the collapse of Iran's informal economy — the only economy available to them — Afghan workers are crossing back into Taliban-governed Afghanistan, trading one form of hardship for another. It is a migration born not of opportunity but of arithmetic, and it is quietly redrawing the human geography of a region already shaped by decades of displacement.
Afghan migrants return from Iran to Taliban rule amid economic desperation
Afghan migrants face economic displacement and forced migration decisions between poverty in Iran and political uncertainty under Taliban rule.