Geographical Research

Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most important countries, accepting immigrants and refugees from around the world. The immigrants are mostly from the neighboring countries.These immigrants had to leave their countries due tosecurity issues and difficult economic and social conditions. Most of these immigrants are Afghans.The greatest wave of immigration from Afghanistan to Iran startedwith Soviet attacksince 1978.
Mashhad the center of Khorasan-Razavi province sharing the eastern borders with this country,is one of the most important centers accept these immigrants. The population of Mashhad is about 3 million. And about4 decades after the first waves of Afghans' refugees, several million immigrants are periodically or permanently reside there. According to statistics provided by the authorities in 2012 about 150 thousand Afghan immigrants legally live in Mashhad, and have been estimated to be as many as illegal immigrants are living in this city.During these years, the facilities forimmigrants in the various fields are provided, including education, insurance, training, professional skills, etc.
The immigrants entering Iran has created many changes inthe economic, social, educational and cultural both for the immigrants and the host society.
 Alongside with the given facilities and changes taken place during decades in Iran, there have been different positive or negative views on the acceptance and residence of these immigrants. What is important is, despite the large amount of these immigrants mostly from Afghanistan and their long -term residence in Iran, how welcomed are they in the host society? How the immigrants and the host society’s people interaction is? What is the people's views over acceptance or reject these immigrants?
This research aims to find Mashhad’s citizens attitude as an important center accepting foreign migrants and connection of these attitudes with factors such as gender, education, income, job variety, location in the city and ethnicity.
Research Methodology
The methodology of this research is based on survey. The needed data have been gathered using the questionnaire. The assessment of these variables has been done using Likert and Bougardos scale. According to the aim research,the dependent variable analyzed by independent variables, is the respondentsattitudes over foreign immigrants. These attitudes have been analyzed due to economic, sanitation, traffic, education, housing and social harms.
Result
Results show that the most negative attitudes are about social harms variable. According to respondents view, the migrants impact on education variableis not positive either. The housing indicator has less negative views compared to education and shows 57.6% of respondents as negative attitude. But the respondents view on economic factors is more positive. In total, 32% of the respondents view on foreign migrants is negative.60% isneither positive nor negative and 8% of the view is positive.This research also analyses the connection between citizen’s view and independent indicators. These indicators are built upon economic, social and personal features of respondents such as gender, marital status, education, residence (on foreign migrants’ existence levels), age, nationality, income, religion and relations form with foreign migrants.
Results show that indicators such as gender, age, job and residence of respondents on number of foreign migrants and access level is meaningfully related to respondents views over foreign migrants.
Men have more negative attitudes over the issue than women and it shows the gender and views on foreign migrants are related.Relation between respondents’ age and their views shows that the older the respondents are, the more negative their views are. Relation between respondent’s job and their views shows that the industrial jobs, business and governmental jobs have mostly negative views.The respondents city zone (on welfarelevels), influences their views. Meaning that the more their residence has lower levels on sustainability, the more negative their views on foreign migrants are.The respondents city zone (on the number of foreign migrants) influences their views too. Meaning the people living in areas with a large number of foreign migrants has a more negative view than the people with fewer migrants in their neighborhood. The type and level of relationship with foreign migrants also influences their views. The more connected are the citizens to foreign migrants, the less negative views they have.Items such as marital status, education, income, religion, and ethnicity have no concern with Mashhad citizen attitudes