Thematic Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis of Online Reactions to the Expulsion of Afghan Medical and Dental Students
Introduction
The relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has remained difficult despite extensive cultural, political, economic and geographical ties. One longstanding source of tension has been the Durand Line and the related Pashtunistan question. Afghanistan voted against Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations on 30 September 1947, while subsequently withdrawing that negative vote on 20 October 1947 and congratulating Pakistan. The dispute was closely connected to Afghanistan’s position concerning the North-West Frontier and the status of Pashtun populations on the Pakistani side of the frontier (United Nations, 1947a, 1947b).
Relations have also repeatedly been affected by security and political disputes. In the contemporary period, Pakistan has repeatedly raised concerns about Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) activity from Afghan territory, while Afghan authorities have disputed Pakistani allegations. These tensions have made border security, militant activity and territorial sovereignty important components of the bilateral relationship.
The refugee dimension of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations is equally significant. Pakistan has hosted large Afghan populations over several decades. The major refugee influx followed the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, after which Pakistan became one of the principal destinations for Afghan refugees. Subsequent waves of displacement followed the conflicts of the 1990s and the events surrounding the international intervention beginning in2001 (UNHCR, 2008, 2011).
UNHCR reported 777,986 registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan as of 30 June 2026, while also documenting substantial return movements (UNHCR, 2026a)
Afghan migration to Pakistan should therefore not be understood solely as the consequence of one conflict. It reflects decades of political instability, armed conflict, economic hardship and established cross-border social networks. Pakistan’s role as a host country has consequently become connected to the broader political and security relationship between the two states. As bilateral relations have become increasingly securitised, the position of Afghan nationals within Pakistan has also become connected to questions of national security, sovereignty, legality and bilateral tensions.
This dynamic can be observed in the September 2026 controversy surrounding Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) directives concerning Afghan medical and dental students. The PMDC issued a notification on 1 September directing Afghan medical students enrolled in Pakistani colleges to return to Afghanistan and barring medical and dental colleges from granting admission or placement to Afghan students during the relevant academic session. The Lahore High Court subsequently suspended the operation of the directives to the extent of the petitioners and allowed affected students to continue their education while the case proceeded (Dawn, 2026a, 2026b).
At first sight, the issue can be understood as a domestic question concerning immigration status, educational access and regulation of foreign students. However, the discourse surrounding the case demonstrates how such a dispute can acquire a broader security dimension. The accompanying empirical study examined 53 publicly available comments collected from Instagram, X and YouTube. Security and terrorism linkage was the most frequently identified theme, followed by ingratitude or hospitality-debt framing and collective versus individual guilt. Counter-discourses concerning due process, proportionality and humanisation were also present.
The article argues that the securitisation of Afghan nationals does not occur independently of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations. Existing bilateral tensions provide a political context through which migration and the presence of Afghan nationals can increasingly be interpreted through a security lens. The PMDC case provides a focused case through which this interaction between domestic governance, public discourse and interstate security politics can be examined.
Research Questions
– What recurring themes appeared in online reactions to the expulsion of Afghan medical and dental students?
– What rhetorical and discursive strategies were used to justify, challenge, or contextualize the expulsion?
– How does the securitisation of Afghan nationals in Pakistan transform a domestic migration and education dispute into a question of sovereignty, national security, and Pakistan-Afghanistan relations?
Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations and Afghan Displacement
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a long and complex relationship in which territorial questions, cross-border communities, security concerns and migration have repeatedly intersected. The Durand Line and the Pashtunistan question were already central to the relationship at the time of Pakistan’s independence. Historical diplomatic records show that Afghanistan’s 1947 position at the United Nations was linked to its disagreement over the North-West Frontier and the status of Pashtun populations (United Nations, 1947a, 1947b).
The security dimension of the relationship has developed through subsequent periods of conflict and political change. In the contemporary period, Pakistan has repeatedly identified TTP activity and the use of Afghan territory by militant groups as major concerns. This has contributed to a bilateral environment in which Afghan territory, Afghan state conduct and Afghan nationals can become connected within security narratives.
The refugee relationship has simultaneously been exceptionally long-running. UNHCR records the major movement of Afghans into Pakistan following the Soviet intervention in 1979 and subsequent waves of displacement. Pakistan’s hosting role has involved formal refugee registration, humanitarian assistance, voluntary repatriation programmes and, more recently, large-scale returns and migration-control measures (UNHCR, 2008, 2011, 2026a).
These developments matter for the PMDC case because Afghan nationals in Pakistan are situated within a relationship that is not politically neutral. Their treatment may be interpreted through the immediate administrative issue at hand, but it can also be connected to broader narratives concerning the Afghan state, terrorism, border security and Pakistani sovereignty.
At the same time, the existence of security tensions does not mean that every policy affecting Afghan nationals is automatically a securitising act. The analytical task is to examine how an issue is framed, which threats are invoked, how the relevant group is constructed, and how audiences respond to those claims.
Theoretical Framework:
Securitisation Theory
This study uses securitisation theory, particularly the Copenhagen School approach developed by Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde (1998), as its principal International Relations framework. Securitisation theory examines how issues are constructed as existential threats through political discourse and how this construction can make measures appear necessary or legitimate beyond ordinary political procedures.
The relevance of the framework here lies in the difference between an issue being objectively dangerous and an issue being represented as a security threat. Afghan students can be understood through ordinary categories such as foreign students, migrants or residents. They can also be represented through references to terrorism, insecurity, illegality, national loyalty or threats to the Pakistani state. The theoretical question is therefore how and when the latter security framing becomes politically meaningful.
Political and institutional actors may function as securitising actors when they frame Afghan nationals, migration or Afghan state conduct through terrorism, insecurity, cross-border militancy or threats to national interests. This study does not claim that the PMDC notification alone proves successful securitisation. Rather, the notification and surrounding discourse form the policy context for examining how security claims are reproduced and contested.
Furthermore, in the case examined here, the referent object is principally the Pakistani state, including its sovereignty, territorial integrity and national security. The perceived threat is constructed through references to terrorism, militant activity, illegal residence, political interference, disloyalty or wider insecurity.
Additionally, the audience dimension is particularly important because securitisation is not established merely by a political actor making a security claim. The online comments analysed here provide a site through which acceptance, reproduction, challenge and rejection of security narratives can be observed. Some comments reproduced collective security narratives, while others challenged collective responsibility and emphasised individual circumstances, proportionality, due process and educational rights.
The study therefore treats online comments as evidence of discursive reception and contestation, not as a representative measure of Pakistani public opinion. The dataset is purposive and convenience-based, and platform dynamics may privilege strongly expressed or polarised views.
Methodology and Research Design
The study uses a combination of thematic analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Initially, 70 publicly available comments were collected from Instagram, X and YouTube in response to the controversy. Each comment was reviewed and coded for recurring themes, rhetorical strategies and overall valence.
Following the initial review, 17 comments were excluded because they were insufficiently relevant to the research question, too unclear to be meaningfully coded, or did not contain enough substantive content for discourse analysis. The final analytical corpus therefore consisted of 53 comments.
The unit of analysis was the individual comment or relevant excerpt. Multiple codes could be assigned to a single comment where it contained more than one distinct theme or discursive strategy. Thematic analysis was used to identify recurring patterns across the corpus, while CDA was used to examine how language constructed identities, threats, responsibility, belonging, legitimacy and competing interpretations of the event.
The CDA framework combines the Discourse-Historical Approach associated with Reisigl and Wodak, van Dijk’s Ideological Square, Copenhagen School securitisation theory and van Leeuwen’s framework of legitimation. Securitisation theory provides the IR framework; CDA provides the principal method for examining how security and group identities are constructed in language.
Table 1. Distribution of Recurring Themes in the 53-Comment Corpus
Case Study: The PMDC Controversy
In September 2026, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council issued directives concerning Afghan medical students enrolled in Pakistani institutions. Reporting on the 1 September notification stated that Afghan medical students enrolled in Pakistani colleges were directed to return to Afghanistan and that medical and dental colleges were barred from granting admission or placement to Afghan students during the current academic session (Dawn, 2026a).
The issue quickly became subject to judicial challenge. Thirteen Afghan students in Lahore petitioned the Lahore High Court, and on 11 September Justice Khalid Ishaq suspended operation of the PMDC directives to the extent of the petitioners and directed that the affected students be allowed to continue their education and sit examinations while the case proceeded (Dawn, 2026b). The suspension was subsequently extended while respondents prepared their replies (Dawn, 2026c).
The case is analytically significant because it sits at the intersection of education, migration governance and interstate security politics. The immediate policy question concerned the status of foreign students. Yet reporting also recorded a national-security justification from the PMDC side, while the Foreign Office distinguished the situation from a blanket ban on all Afghan students and stated that students with valid visas and enrolment could remain (Dawn, 2026b).
The case therefore provides an opportunity to examine how a domestic regulatory measure can become embedded in a broader security narrative while simultaneously being challenged through legal, educational and rights-based arguments.
Thematic Analysis
Security and terrorism linkage
Security and terrorism linkage appeared in 18 comments, making it the most frequent theme. Comments in this category connected Afghan students with terrorism, militant activity, national security or Afghan state conduct. From a securitisation perspective, this shifts an educational and administrative question into a security frame.
Ingratitude and hospitality-debt
This theme appeared in 14 comments. Education, residence and visas were sometimes represented as privileges or favours granted by Pakistan rather than arrangements governed by specific legal or administrative relationships. This framing contributed to conditional ideas of belonging.
Collective versus individual guilt
This appeared in 12 comments and constituted the central fault line across the corpus. Some commenters extended alleged conduct by particular students to the wider group, while others challenged that move and distinguished individuals from the wider Afghan student population.
Due process and proportionality
This appeared in 11 comments and formed a major counter-discourse. These comments questioned the consequences of expelling students, especially those already part-way through their degrees, and argued against collective punishment.
Humanisation through personal relationships
Seven comments referred to classmates, friends or specific students, creating an alternative discourse in which Afghan students appeared as individuals rather than an undifferentiated national category.
Intra-Pakistani ethnic politics
Five comments redirected the discussion toward domestic ethnic politics. Although tangential to the main case, these comments demonstrate that the controversy could also be incorporated into existing domestic political divisions.
Nationalist affirmation
Five comments invoked national sovereignty, belonging and patriotic responsibility to legitimise restrictive treatment.
Gendered counter-framing
Two comments distinguished Afghan women and girls from Afghan men or separated Afghan society from the Taliban regime. The same gendered distinction could be used to support sympathy for some Afghans or to justify restrictions on others.
Empirical Context: Evidence, Public Narratives, and Audience Discourse
Claims about Afghan refugee involvement in terrorism and crime in Pakistan have been frequent and severe, while the available published evidence has often been considerably narrower. One of the clearest datasets, based on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa prosecution and police records obtained through the Right to Information Act, covered major crimes from 2014 to September 2016. It found that 300 of 23,007 accused persons in the cases covered were Afghan refugees, equivalent to approximately 1.3 percent. The same report noted that figures circulated by law-enforcement agencies had ranged from 15 to 30 percent, without comparable supporting evidence (Khan, 2017).
The significance of this discrepancy is not that the 1.3 percent figure demonstrates the complete absence of criminal involvement by Afghan refugees. Rather, it illustrates a recurring gap between the scale of available evidence and the scale of claims made about Afghan nationals. That gap is relevant to securitisation because security narratives do not depend only on the existence of individual cases; they also depend on how those cases are represented, generalized, and connected to a wider category of people.
The gap became visible again in September 2026, when Pakistan’s medical regulator, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), issued directives concerning Afghan medical and dental students. Reporting indicated that already-enrolled Afghan students were directed to return to Afghanistan and that institutions were restricted from granting new admissions or placements to Afghan students during the relevant academic session. The issue affected students in Lahore and was subsequently challenged before the Lahore High Court. The court suspended operation of the relevant directives to the extent of the petitioners and allowed the affected students to continue their education while the proceedings continued (Dawn, 2026a, 2026b, 2026c).
The controversy is analytically important because the immediate policy issue concerned education, documentation and the status of foreign students, yet it was also discussed through the language of national security. Human-rights reporting placed the number of affected students in Lahore at roughly 100, including an estimated 20 to 40 women. At the same time, PMDC later emphasized that its review concerned documentation and regulatory compliance rather than nationality. These competing descriptions illustrate the tension between an administrative characterisation of the issue and its wider security framing.
To examine how such gaps between evidence and public narratives are reproduced and contested, the study initially collected 70 publicly available comments from Instagram, X and YouTube.
Seventeen comments were subsequently excluded because they were insufficiently relevant, unclear, or lacked enough substantive material for discourse analysis. The final analytical corpus therefore consisted of 53 comments. The comments were analysed through thematic analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, with multiple codes permitted for a single comment.
The comments repeatedly revealed a movement from particular allegations toward broader claims about Afghan students. This process of generalisation, or scale-jumping, was central to the discourse. One recurring argument contrasted a population of more than 100 Afghan students with approximately 20 students reportedly implicated in the incident. The analytical significance of the comparison lies not in treating the 20-in-100 figure as an official PMDC count, but in showing how commenters themselves used the distinction between a limited group of implicated students and the wider student population to argue either for collective punishment or for an individuated response.
This distinction is important for the securitisation argument. Once conduct attributed to particular individuals is represented as characteristic of an entire national category, the policy object can shift from regulating specific conduct to managing a perceived collective threat. The same discursive movement can therefore connect a domestic education dispute with broader questions of migration, national security and Pakistan-Afghanistan relations.
Three rhetorical strategies were especially prominent within the anti-student cluster: security and terrorism linkage, ingratitude or hospitality-debt framing, and explicit collective-versus-individual blame. Security and terrorism linkage was the most frequent coded theme, appearing in 18 of the 53 comments. Ingratitude and hospitality-debt framing appeared in 14 comments, while collective versus individual guilt appeared in 12. Because comments could receive multiple codes, these frequencies are not mutually exclusive.
Security-framed comments cast an educational or regulatory dispute in terms of terrorism, militant activity, national security and Afghan state conduct. In this sense, the language used by commenters reproduced a securitising frame in which the student was no longer represented only as an individual foreign student but as part of a wider security problem. This is analytically distinct from claiming that the comments themselves constituted successful securitisation. Rather, they provide evidence of audience discourse that reproduced, reinforced or contested security narratives.
Debt or gift framing operated differently but produced a related effect. Some commenters represented visas, education and continued residence as privileges or favours granted by Pakistan. A comment stating that a visa is a privilege rather than a right, for example, positioned continued presence as conditional on loyalty or gratitude. Another comment questioned why Pakistani taxpayers should finance education for Afghans. These arguments transformed an administrative or educational relationship into a moral relationship of debt, in which the recipient could be portrayed as having forfeited an entitlement through alleged disloyalty.
A counter-discourse was nevertheless visible. Due-process and proportionality arguments appeared in 11 comments, while humanisation through personal relationships appeared in 7. These comments referred to classmates, friends, final-year students and the consequences of interrupting education. Rather than treating “Afghan students” as a single category, they reintroduced individual circumstances into the discussion. Reciprocity and fairness appeals also appeared in 9 comments and were used by both sides to argue competing positions about how Pakistani students would be treated abroad.
The counter-discourse therefore matters to the IR analysis because it shows that audience reception was not uniform. The comments contained both reinforcement and contestation of the security frame. The empirical finding is consequently not that Pakistani society accepted a single securitising narrative, but that a security narrative provided one powerful interpretive framework through which the PMDC controversy was understood and debated.
Critical Discourse Analysis
– Generalisation and scale-jumping. A limited allegation or action was extended from particular individuals to the wider category of Afghan students. The recurring movement from “some” to “all” was central to the collective-responsibility debate.
– Securitisation. Administrative or regulatory questions were frequently placed within an existential security frame, including references to terrorism and national security. This shifted the issue from individual conduct toward collective threat.
– Debt/gift framing. Some comments represented visas, education and continued residence as privileges or favours granted by Pakistan rather than relationships governed by specific legal, academic or administrative arrangements.
– Collective versus individual responsibility. The same logic appeared on both sides. Some commenters used the actions of a minority to justify collective consequences, while others used the limited number of implicated students to argue against collective punishment.
– Humanisation and individuation. Personal relationships and references to classmates created an alternative discourse in which Afghan students appeared as individuals with specific relationships and experiences.
– Reciprocity and fairness. Comparisons with the hypothetical treatment of Pakistani students abroad were used by opposing sides to make competing claims about fairness and legitimate treatment.
– Gendered counter-framing. A small number of comments separated Afghan women from Afghan men, producing competing arguments about who should or should not be affected by the policy.
– Nationalist legitimation. Some comments invoked national sovereignty, belonging and patriotic responsibility to legitimise restrictive treatment.
Discussion
The findings demonstrate that the PMDC controversy cannot be understood solely as an educational dispute. The online discourse drew upon a vocabulary concerning security, terrorism, gratitude, burden, loyalty, fairness, sovereignty and belonging. The empirical findings therefore connect directly to the International Relations problem identified in the research question.
The central movement was from individual conduct to collective identity. An allegation concerning particular individuals could become a claim about an entire national group. Once that move occurs, the distinction between Afghan students, Afghan nationals and Afghan state conduct becomes blurred.
From a securitisation perspective, this matters because the security meaning of the issue is produced through discourse. The student is no longer represented only as a foreign student whose educational status is being regulated. In security-framed comments, the student becomes connected to terrorism, militant activity, Afghan state conduct and the protection of Pakistani national interests.
At the same time, the findings show that securitising narratives were contested. Due process, proportionality, personal relationships and reciprocity provided alternative frames. This means the empirical evidence should not be presented as proof that Pakistani society uniformly accepted securitisation. Rather, it shows competing audience responses to security narratives.
The PMDC case consequently illustrates how domestic migration governance can become intertwined with international security politics. The bilateral relationship supplies a broader political context in which Afghan nationals may be interpreted through security categories.
The domestic policy issue then becomes connected to sovereignty, border security and Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan.
The contribution of the study is therefore twofold. Empirically, it documents the discursive patterns through which Afghan medical and dental students were represented in a defined sample of online reactions. Theoretically, it demonstrates how those representations can be interpreted through securitisation theory as part of the interaction between domestic migration governance and interstate security politics.
Limitations
The final sample consists of 53 comments drawn from an initial collection of 70 online comments. The sample was purposive and convenience-based rather than statistically representative.
Comments were collected across Instagram, X and YouTube without attempting to construct a gender-balanced sample or limit the research to a particular geographical locality.
The dataset therefore cannot be used to make claims about Pakistani public opinion as a whole. Online comments are shaped by platform dynamics and by individuals who choose to comment publicly, which may give greater visibility to strongly expressed or polarised views. The 17 excluded comments also mean that the final corpus represents only comments containing sufficient relevant and analysable material for the chosen methodology.
The analysis did not use a second independent coder or an inter-rater reliability test. A second coder and an appropriate reliability measure, such as Cohen’s kappa, would strengthen a larger publication-grade study. The findings should therefore be understood as an analysis of discursive patterns within this particular sample rather than a measurement of general public sentiment.
A further theoretical limitation is that the study’s primary data are online comments. The study can therefore examine audience discourse and the circulation of securitising narratives, but it cannot by itself establish the complete intentions of state actors or demonstrate successful securitisation in the strongest Copenhagen School sense. Future research should systematically analyse official speeches, notifications and institutional statements alongside audience responses.
Ethical Considerations
The analysis uses publicly available comments for research purposes. The dataset is presented as an analytical corpus rather than as a record of identifiable individuals. Commenters are not identified by name, username, profile link or other personally identifying information. The research focuses on patterns of discourse rather than profiling individual commenters.
The accompanying dataset reproduces comment excerpts without usernames, profile links or other identifying information. Quotations are treated as research data and are used to illustrate analytical categories rather than to identify or evaluate individual commenters.
Conclusion
This study examined online reactions to Pakistan’s September 2026 directives concerning Afghan medical and dental students through thematic analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, while placing the findings within the International Relations framework of securitisation theory.
The central research question asked how the securitisation of Afghan nationals in Pakistan transforms a domestic migration and education dispute into a question of sovereignty, national security and Pakistan-Afghanistan relations.
The findings suggest that this transformation occurs through the movement of discourse from individual conduct to collective identity and from administrative questions to security concerns.
Within the analysed corpus, Afghan students were frequently discussed through references to terrorism, national security, loyalty, sovereignty and Afghan state conduct. At the same time, counter-discourses challenged collective responsibility through appeals to proportionality, due process, fairness and individual circumstances.
The study does not establish that all Pakistani citizens accept the securitisation of Afghan nationals, nor does the dataset establish successful securitisation in the strictest theoretical sense. The sample consists of 53 purposively collected online comments and cannot represent Pakistani public opinion as a whole.
Instead, the study demonstrates how securitising and counter-securitising narratives operate around a specific policy controversy. The broader significance of the case lies in showing how domestic migration governance can become intertwined with international security relations.
The PMDC case therefore illustrates how a dispute concerning education and migration status can become embedded within the security politics of an interstate relationship. The treatment of Afghan nationals in Pakistan is shaped not only by questions of migration status or domestic regulation, but also by the wider political relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Future research should examine official political and institutional statements alongside public discourse in order to trace more directly the relationship between securitising actors, policy measures and audience acceptance. A larger and more systematically sampled corpus could also provide stronger evidence concerning changes in public discourse across platforms and overtime.
References
