شمارۀ جدید فصلنامه (تابستان 1404) منتشر شد
Volume 16, Issue 2 (4-2025)
Social Problems of Iran 2025, 16(2): 227-266 |
Back to browse issues page
Download citation:
BibTeX | RIS | EndNote | Medlars | ProCite | Reference Manager | RefWorks
Send citation to:
BibTeX | RIS | EndNote | Medlars | ProCite | Reference Manager | RefWorks
Send citation to:
Maddahi J, Safari Shali R, Kabiri S. (2025). Emotional Ambivalence in the Migration Intentions of Tehran’s Youth: From the Entanglement of Conflicting Feelings to the Trauma of Decision-Making. Social Problems of Iran. 16(2), 227-266. doi:10.61882/jspi.16.2.227
URL: http://jspi.khu.ac.ir/article-1-3893-en.html
URL: http://jspi.khu.ac.ir/article-1-3893-en.html
1- Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences Education, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran , j.maddahi@cfu.ac.ir
2- Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
3- Assistant Professor, Department of Social Studies Research, Institute for Cultural, Social, and Civilizational Studies, Tehran, Iran
2- Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
3- Assistant Professor, Department of Social Studies Research, Institute for Cultural, Social, and Civilizational Studies, Tehran, Iran
Abstract: (198 Views)
In the contemporary world, migration is no longer merely a geographical relocation; rather, it constitutes an emotional, uncertain, and identity-related process imbued with both hope and apprehension. The present study sought to examine the feelings of young people in Tehran regarding emigration from Iran, employing a qualitative methodology grounded in grounded theory. To this end, in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 young residents of Tehran, selected through purposive and snowball sampling. Data analysis yielded 108 open codes, 29 subcategories, 9 main categories, and a single core category. The categories included: Suspended Identity (the dilemma of staying or leaving: the trauma of correct decision-making and the fear of regret); Fantasy Dreaming or Mythical Utopias (the modern dream: geographical psychosis); Roots of the Desire to Leave (ranging from minor frustrations to the pursuit of an unrealized self); Commodification, Consumerism, and the Subject-Making of Economic Success; Instagram’s Performative Representation of Migrant Life: from Reality to Spectacle; Strategies (from pursuing migration regulations to quitting jobs and withdrawing from everyday activities); and Consequences (from anxiety and excitement to tension and uncertainty). The core category was identified as “The Problem of Youth Migration: from the Entanglement of Contradictory Emotions to the Desire for an Imagined Elsewhere.” On this basis, a paradigm model was developed. The findings indicate that fear, doubt, stress, and unease are deeply embedded in young people’s decision-making about migration. This affective conflict is more than a temporary or situational feeling. The study suggests that, for some young people in Tehran, migration represents a fusion of dreams and anxieties: a movement from aspects of a dissatisfied self toward an uncertain and challenging destination. This reflects a dual condition and process in the lives of contemporary youth, entrapping them in the dilemma of leaving or staying, and of being and becoming.
Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
In the contemporary world, migration is no longer merely an act of geographical relocation; rather, it represents an emotional, identity-laden, and ambivalent process shaped by both hope and apprehension. While most studies on migration have primarily approached the subject from structural, financial, economic, individual, familial, educational, or skill-based perspectives, much less attention has been paid to its deeper meanings—particularly among young people. This neglect has deprived the scholarly community of a fuller understanding of the internal motivations and complex mechanisms involved in the decision to migrate. Migration, whether through its tangible trends (migration of young people from less developed countries to developed countries) or in other ways (migration between developed countries), has been a pervasive concept in the last half century. With a little reflection, it can be said that migration, especially from less developed countries to developed countries, has become a problem and even a social problem, at least in the research literature. The present study considers its sociological mission to be to understand the emotions and meanings of migration among some young people affected by the broad structures of society, because the subject of sociology is not simply the individual; rather, it is the subject of sociology of society itself. Therefore, in this article, emphasizing the contemporary sociological approach, we have tried to set aside obvious assumptions regarding the phenomenon of migration and, by adopting an analytical stance, to find the ability to understand the meanings and feelings of young people regarding the decision to migrate or not.
2. Methodology
The present study aimed to explore how young people in Tehran perceive and emotionally experience the idea of emigration. The research employed a qualitative methodology within an interpretive paradigm, using grounded theory. Grounded theory is particularly suited to studies seeking to understand the meanings of phenomena from the perspective and lived experience of those directly engaged with them. Participants included men and women aged 18 to 40 residing in Tehran, who either intended to migrate or were in the process of doing so. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 28 participants, conducted via purposive sampling combined with snowball sampling. Interviews lasted on average between 55 minutes and 4 hours, in some cases extending across multiple sessions, and the overall data collection process spanned more than nine months. Among the questions raised in the interview were: What feelings do young people who are inclined to migrate in Tehran experience during this decision? What is their understanding of the migration phenomenon? What are the grounds and reasons for the decision to migrate? What are the emotional, social, cultural, and economic consequences of this decision on them?
Theoretical saturation was achieved, and analysis followed grounded theory’s coding procedures, including open, axial, and selective coding. From the data, 108 open codes, 29 subcategories, 9 main categories, and one core category emerged. The main categories included: Suspended Identity (the dilemma of staying or leaving: the trauma of correct decision-making and fear of regret); Fantasy Dreaming or Mythical Utopias (the modern dream: geographical psychosis); Roots of the Desire to Leave (from minor frustrations to the pursuit of an unrealized self); Commodification, Consumerism, and the Subject-Making of Economic Success; Instagram’s Performative Representation of Migrant Life: from Reality to Spectacle; Strategies (ranging from following migration laws to quitting jobs and withdrawing from daily life); and Consequences (spanning anxiety, excitement, tension, and doubt). The core category was identified as “The Problem of Youth Migration: from the Entanglement of Contradictory Emotions to the Desire for an Imagined Elsewhere.” Based on these findings, a paradigm model was developed.
3. Findings
The analysis also resonates with Heidegger’s critique of modernity, suggesting that modernization—through the commodification of desires, calculative rationality, the neglect of public life, and the intensification of sensory contradictions—has shaped young people’s aspirations and anxieties. The capitalist system, with its seductive imagery and promises, channels youth identities, feelings, and aspirations, producing a sense of inadequacy or incompleteness. As a result, the elevation of consumption as a marker of social and cultural life has reshaped roles, values, and everyday practices, while fostering dissatisfaction, consumerist excess, and the pursuit of distinction through luxury. In this light, migration can be understood as an expression of the modernization of dreams and aspirations.
Findings reveal multiple layers of emotional contradiction surrounding migration among Tehran’s youth. At the core of decision-making lies fear, doubt, stress, and unease, manifesting in profound struggles over staying or leaving. The desire to migrate in pursuit of self-realization is accompanied by hesitation and anxiety, creating an emotional-psychological conflict that is neither temporary nor superficial, but rather an ontological condition of modern youth: being trapped between leaving or staying, being and becoming. For some, the wish to migrate becomes a form of emotional torment—not physical punishment, but persistent inner rumination about what will happen if one leaves or stays. Each choice carries with it sadness, regret, and fear.
This underscores the significance of the sociology of emotions in understanding youth actions. At the very least, the study demonstrates that migration and the desire to migrate among young people is not merely a geographical relocation, but a paradoxical social and emotional experience. The youth under study emerge as tragic figures caught within a narrative of contradictions, staged against a backdrop of consumerism and individualism.
4. Conclusion
To address this paradox—or to mitigate the desire for migration—several policy recommendations may be proposed: recognizing and valuing youth emotions and affect; strengthening discourses of belonging, hope, solidarity, and emotional commitment; developing educational and academic programs centered on social hope, national identity, and social cohesion; designing emotional-empowerment initiatives for youth; addressing emotional needs to reduce feelings of neglect and enhance intergenerational dialogue; and fostering cultural policies that strengthen national pride and belonging through media and cultural programs that present positive, hopeful, and empowering images of youth and local achievements. This is where the sociology of emotions and feelings plays an important role in understanding the actions of young people. The emotional-emotional study of migration in the present article shows, at least in its minimal function, that migration and the desire for it among young people is not just a movement from one place to another and relocation; it is rather a paradox of feeling and social living. Here, the young person under study has become a tragic figure in a scenario of contradictions that is displayed on the stage of a consumerist and individualistic life. Therefore, in order to manage this paradox or fundamentally reduce the desire for youth migration, several policy recommendations can be proposed, for example: Correctly recognizing the emotions and feelings of youth and believing in the importance of this issue; Strengthening the discourse of belonging, hope, solidarity, and emotional commitment among youth; Designing and creating educational, scientific programs, student and university curricula centered on social hope, belonging to national identity, and strengthening the discourse of cohesion and social capital; Creating programs for the emotional empowerment of youth and adolescents, emotional resilience, and creating hopeful and identity-building meanings; Paying attention to the emotional needs of youth, reducing the feeling of being ignored, and strengthening intergenerational dialogues; Creating cultural policies to strengthen national-emotional pride and pride through media-cultural programs to develop a positive, hopeful, vibrant, future-building, and calming image; An emotional-sentimental display of indigenous heroic youth, proud indigenous capacities, identification of the unique capacities of national belonging, and movement towards the importance of finding emotional attachment to identity.
Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
In the contemporary world, migration is no longer merely an act of geographical relocation; rather, it represents an emotional, identity-laden, and ambivalent process shaped by both hope and apprehension. While most studies on migration have primarily approached the subject from structural, financial, economic, individual, familial, educational, or skill-based perspectives, much less attention has been paid to its deeper meanings—particularly among young people. This neglect has deprived the scholarly community of a fuller understanding of the internal motivations and complex mechanisms involved in the decision to migrate. Migration, whether through its tangible trends (migration of young people from less developed countries to developed countries) or in other ways (migration between developed countries), has been a pervasive concept in the last half century. With a little reflection, it can be said that migration, especially from less developed countries to developed countries, has become a problem and even a social problem, at least in the research literature. The present study considers its sociological mission to be to understand the emotions and meanings of migration among some young people affected by the broad structures of society, because the subject of sociology is not simply the individual; rather, it is the subject of sociology of society itself. Therefore, in this article, emphasizing the contemporary sociological approach, we have tried to set aside obvious assumptions regarding the phenomenon of migration and, by adopting an analytical stance, to find the ability to understand the meanings and feelings of young people regarding the decision to migrate or not.
2. Methodology
The present study aimed to explore how young people in Tehran perceive and emotionally experience the idea of emigration. The research employed a qualitative methodology within an interpretive paradigm, using grounded theory. Grounded theory is particularly suited to studies seeking to understand the meanings of phenomena from the perspective and lived experience of those directly engaged with them. Participants included men and women aged 18 to 40 residing in Tehran, who either intended to migrate or were in the process of doing so. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 28 participants, conducted via purposive sampling combined with snowball sampling. Interviews lasted on average between 55 minutes and 4 hours, in some cases extending across multiple sessions, and the overall data collection process spanned more than nine months. Among the questions raised in the interview were: What feelings do young people who are inclined to migrate in Tehran experience during this decision? What is their understanding of the migration phenomenon? What are the grounds and reasons for the decision to migrate? What are the emotional, social, cultural, and economic consequences of this decision on them?
Theoretical saturation was achieved, and analysis followed grounded theory’s coding procedures, including open, axial, and selective coding. From the data, 108 open codes, 29 subcategories, 9 main categories, and one core category emerged. The main categories included: Suspended Identity (the dilemma of staying or leaving: the trauma of correct decision-making and fear of regret); Fantasy Dreaming or Mythical Utopias (the modern dream: geographical psychosis); Roots of the Desire to Leave (from minor frustrations to the pursuit of an unrealized self); Commodification, Consumerism, and the Subject-Making of Economic Success; Instagram’s Performative Representation of Migrant Life: from Reality to Spectacle; Strategies (ranging from following migration laws to quitting jobs and withdrawing from daily life); and Consequences (spanning anxiety, excitement, tension, and doubt). The core category was identified as “The Problem of Youth Migration: from the Entanglement of Contradictory Emotions to the Desire for an Imagined Elsewhere.” Based on these findings, a paradigm model was developed.
3. Findings
The analysis also resonates with Heidegger’s critique of modernity, suggesting that modernization—through the commodification of desires, calculative rationality, the neglect of public life, and the intensification of sensory contradictions—has shaped young people’s aspirations and anxieties. The capitalist system, with its seductive imagery and promises, channels youth identities, feelings, and aspirations, producing a sense of inadequacy or incompleteness. As a result, the elevation of consumption as a marker of social and cultural life has reshaped roles, values, and everyday practices, while fostering dissatisfaction, consumerist excess, and the pursuit of distinction through luxury. In this light, migration can be understood as an expression of the modernization of dreams and aspirations.
Findings reveal multiple layers of emotional contradiction surrounding migration among Tehran’s youth. At the core of decision-making lies fear, doubt, stress, and unease, manifesting in profound struggles over staying or leaving. The desire to migrate in pursuit of self-realization is accompanied by hesitation and anxiety, creating an emotional-psychological conflict that is neither temporary nor superficial, but rather an ontological condition of modern youth: being trapped between leaving or staying, being and becoming. For some, the wish to migrate becomes a form of emotional torment—not physical punishment, but persistent inner rumination about what will happen if one leaves or stays. Each choice carries with it sadness, regret, and fear.
This underscores the significance of the sociology of emotions in understanding youth actions. At the very least, the study demonstrates that migration and the desire to migrate among young people is not merely a geographical relocation, but a paradoxical social and emotional experience. The youth under study emerge as tragic figures caught within a narrative of contradictions, staged against a backdrop of consumerism and individualism.
4. Conclusion
To address this paradox—or to mitigate the desire for migration—several policy recommendations may be proposed: recognizing and valuing youth emotions and affect; strengthening discourses of belonging, hope, solidarity, and emotional commitment; developing educational and academic programs centered on social hope, national identity, and social cohesion; designing emotional-empowerment initiatives for youth; addressing emotional needs to reduce feelings of neglect and enhance intergenerational dialogue; and fostering cultural policies that strengthen national pride and belonging through media and cultural programs that present positive, hopeful, and empowering images of youth and local achievements. This is where the sociology of emotions and feelings plays an important role in understanding the actions of young people. The emotional-emotional study of migration in the present article shows, at least in its minimal function, that migration and the desire for it among young people is not just a movement from one place to another and relocation; it is rather a paradox of feeling and social living. Here, the young person under study has become a tragic figure in a scenario of contradictions that is displayed on the stage of a consumerist and individualistic life. Therefore, in order to manage this paradox or fundamentally reduce the desire for youth migration, several policy recommendations can be proposed, for example: Correctly recognizing the emotions and feelings of youth and believing in the importance of this issue; Strengthening the discourse of belonging, hope, solidarity, and emotional commitment among youth; Designing and creating educational, scientific programs, student and university curricula centered on social hope, belonging to national identity, and strengthening the discourse of cohesion and social capital; Creating programs for the emotional empowerment of youth and adolescents, emotional resilience, and creating hopeful and identity-building meanings; Paying attention to the emotional needs of youth, reducing the feeling of being ignored, and strengthening intergenerational dialogues; Creating cultural policies to strengthen national-emotional pride and pride through media-cultural programs to develop a positive, hopeful, vibrant, future-building, and calming image; An emotional-sentimental display of indigenous heroic youth, proud indigenous capacities, identification of the unique capacities of national belonging, and movement towards the importance of finding emotional attachment to identity.
Type of Article: Original Research |
Subject:
Social problems
Received: 2025/05/6 | Accepted: 2025/07/17 | Published: 2025/08/24
Received: 2025/05/6 | Accepted: 2025/07/17 | Published: 2025/08/24
References
1. Berşe, S., Karacan, E., Yeşılyurt, P. Z., & Güngörmüş, Z. (2025). Impact of hopelessness on migration intentions of nursing students: a path analysis. BMC nursing, 24(1), 29.
2. DePoy, E. & Gitlin, L. (2005) Introduction to Research: Understanding and Applying Multiple Strategies. Michigan: Mosby.
3. Elster, J. (2009). Strong feelings: Emotion, addiction, and human behavior. Mit Press.
4. Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge University Press.
5. Hochschild, A. R. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American journal of sociology, 85(3), 551-575.
6. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commerzialization of human feeling. University of California Press.
7. Huang, W., & Ren, J. (2023). Migration aspiration and desire of international students: Chinese international students under strain amid geopolitical tension and the COVID-19 pandemic. Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, 7(1-2), 21-46.
8. Huijsmans, R. (2025). The infrastructuring of young adults’ mobility trajectories: a case study of highly educated migrants in platform-mediated food delivery work in the Netherlands. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 51(6), 1508-1525.
9. Jordan, L., Graham, E., Shin, H., Zhang, H., & Zhou, X. (2025). Parental mobility, temporality and migration aspirations among currently non-migrant youth in Indonesia and the Philippines. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1-23.
10. Kwateng-Yeboah, J. (2025). Migratory dreams, prophecies, and intuitions: experiential religion in Ghanaian migration aspirations. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1-20.
11. Kudo, M. (2025). Multinational migration and post-return identity negotiation: an intersectional study of Japanese-Pakistani Muslim youths. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 48(6), 1289-1306.
12. Lupton, D. (1998). The emotional self: A sociocultural exploration. Sage.
13. Méndez, L. (2020). So dissatisfied to leave? The role of perceptions, expectations and beliefs on youths’ intention to migrate: evidence from a developing country. Journal of Happiness Studies, 21(8), 2981-3006.
14. Méndez-Errico, L. (2017). So dissatisfied to leave? The role of perceptions, expectations and beliefs on youths’ intention to migrate, Serie Documentos de Trabajo, DT 12/2017. Instituto de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administración, Universidad de la República, Uruguay, (No. 17-12).
15. Migali, S., & Scipioni, M. (2019). Who’s about to leave? A global survey of aspirations and intentions to migrate. International Migration, 57(5), 181-200.
16. Okyere, S. (2025). Linking young people’s precarious labour, migration, and their social mobility in Ghana: attending to temporality and trajectories. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1-18.
17. Otrachshenko, V., & Popova, O. (2014). Life (dis) satisfaction and the intention to migrate: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 48, 40-49.
18. Rimé, B. (2009). Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: Theory and empirical review. Emotion review, 1(1), 60-85.
19. Rosenwein, B. H. (2006). Emotional communities in the early Middle Ages. Cornell University Press.
20. Sancak, B., Selek, S. N., & Sarı, E. (2023). Depression, anxiety, stress levels and five‐factor personality traits as predictors of clinical medical students' migration intention: A cross‐sectional study of brain drain. The International journal of health planning and management, 38(4), 1015-1031.
21. Turner, J. H. (2007). Human emotions: A sociological theory. Routledge.
22. Usama, E. A., Nilles, H., Braig, J., Schmees, P., Kerkhoff, D., Kilinc, Y., ... & Lohaus, A. (2025). Longitudinal relationships between coping strategies, cultural orientations, and mental health among young refugees from the Middle East in Germany. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 105, 102126.
23. Abdolmolaei, Atieh, Safari Shali, Reza, & Kazemipour, Shahla. (2021/1400). A qualitative study of the contexts and backgrounds of return migration among faculty members in Tehran. Population Studies, 7(1), 219–256. (in Persian)
24. Baudrillard, Jean. (2010/1389). The Consumer Society: Myths and structures (Translated by Pirooz Izadi). Tehran: Sales. (in Persian)
25. Grimaldi, Nicola. (2020/1399). The Fragmented Human (Translated by Abbas Bagheri). Tehran: Ney. (in Persian)
26. Rezaei, Maryam, & Sadeghi, Rasoul. (2021/1400). The aspiration of migration: The tendency of Iranians to emigrate and its determining factors. Contemporary Sociological Research, 10(18), 35–62. (in Persian)
27. Voddahir, Abouali, & Eshraghi, Somayeh. (2022/1401). Tendency to migrate abroad in the Iranian medical community: A qualitative study. Quarterly Journal of Research and Planning in Higher Education, 25(2), 23–42. (in Persian)
28. Ward, Glen. (2017/1396). Postmodernism (6th ed., Translated by Ghader Fakhr Ranjbari & Abozar Karami). Tehran: Mahi Publications. (in Persian)
29. Zare, Bijan, Serajzadeh, Seyyed Hossein, Habibpour Gatabi, Karam, & Maddahi, Javad. (2020/1399). Single life among youth: A socio-cultural problem (An analytical approach based on the ideas of Jean Baudrillard and Richard Sennett). Iranian Journal of Social Issues, 11(2), 97–123. (in Persian)
30. Malekpour Afshar, Reza, et al. (2022/1401). Roots and solutions of the problem of elite migration in Iran. Culture and Health Promotion Journal, 6(1), 81–87. (in Persian)
31. Taheri Damneh, Mohsen, & Kazemi, Masoumeh. (2018/1397). Tendency to emigrate among young people: A qualitative study of future images. Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities Quarterly, 10(4), 53–78. (in Persian)
Send email to the article author
| Rights and permissions | |
 |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC).
