Bangladesh’s Road to Long-term Economic Prosperity by M. G. Quibria

Author:M. G. Quibria
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030115876
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Migration and Remittances: Major Issues

Despite the salience of international labor migration and inward remittances in initiating and sustaining development in Bangladesh, the process has been fraught with myriad issues. The first major issue relates to the costs for Bangladeshi workers, which are among the highest in the world. In the absence of direct hiring by employers, almost all the recruitments in the Gulf countries involve a labyrinthine recruitment network, encompassing the international sponsoring companies to intermediaries in the host country to the recruiting agencies in the home country6 and their subagents, known as dalals—and the cumbersome kafala visa process—where the migrant visas are bought and sold to the highest bidders. The whole process is highly exploitative and almost predatory.

A survey of recently deployed migrant workers by Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit of University of Dhaka (RMMRU) found that the average migration cost currently stands at $4800. The World Bank initiative Knowledge Network on Migration and Development (KNOMAD) reported in 2014 that Bangladeshis had to work for nine months in Kuwait simply to recoup the money that they had spent to finance migration. This contrasts sharply with the situation in other countries. To recover the migration expenses, Indian workers had to work for two and a half months while Sri Lankans for only 1 month. For other countries, it takes, on average, workers 17 months to recoup their recruiter fees and travel costs to Saudi Arabia, around 11 months for the UAE and Oman, and roughly ten months for Bahrain, Libya, and Qatar (Abrar 2017).

In addition to excessive financial costs of migration, potential Bangladeshi migrants are often victims of smuggling or trafficking. There are many reasons for this, one being the complexity of the recruitment networks that makes it difficult to track down such crimes and prosecute the traffickers successfully. In the past, the conviction rates for trafficking had been extremely low for various reasons—including the fact that most laws in this area were recent, and the national criminal justice system did not have adequate expertise as well as resources to successfully handle such prosecutions.

The second concern relates to violation of migrants’ rights. Belonging to the most vulnerable segment in the host countries, migrants often suffer serious violations of their human rights, including abusive or exploitative working conditions and ill-treatment by immigration or law enforcement authorities. In most countries, migrant workers are deprived of basic workplace rights and protections; they are afforded limited access to social security, if any; finally, they are subject to systemic discrimination and widespread xenophobia and prejudice. Female migrants, who work mostly as domestic workers, face even more abuses inside employers’ homes.

The adverse work conditions, in conjunction with excessive workload, poor living conditions, and mental stress, have taken a heavy toll on the otherwise young Bangladeshi migrant workforce. From 2005 to November 2017, more than 33,000 migrant workers returned home dead in body bags. In the first 11 months of 2017, Bangladesh airports received more than 3000 dead bodies, at an average rate of 8 to 10 daily (Dhaka Tribune 2017).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.