This ethnographic study examines collective trauma among Afghan migrants residing in the Qaem settlement, a marginal peri‑urban enclave on the outskirts of Qom, Iran. Based on seven months of fieldwork, incorporating participant observation, in‑depth interviews with 32 participants, and extensive informal conversations, the research investigates how collective trauma is reproduced and symbolically healed within the migrants' lifeworld. Findings reveal that collective trauma in this settlement is not a frozen past event but a dynamic, multilayered process articulated across three interconnected dimensions. First, living with the wound manifests through narratives of homeland loss, internalized violence within family relations, and enforced silence in the face of social exclusion. Second, encountering power structures, through chronic deportation anxiety, persistent cultural shock, and security‑driven stigmatization by state institutions, simultaneously exacerbates past trauma and generates new traumatic experiences. Third, collective healing materializes through informal solidarity networks, the mosque as a sanctuary, and collective narrative practices that function as resistance against forgetting and marginalization. The study advances three conceptual contributions: the notion of "double trauma" as the convergence of historical suffering and present‑day exclusionary structures; the "embodiment of collective trauma" as lived bodily experience; and the reconceptualization of "collective healing" as a form of "everyday politics." Ultimately, the settlement emerges not as a mere peripheral habitat but as a social world where suffering and resistance, loss and reconstruction, are inextricably intertwined, forging a distinctly human mode of survival. These insights call for trauma‑sensitive policies that recognize migrants' psychosocial and symbolic needs alongside their material vulnerabilities.