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International Journal of Migration Research and Development (IJMRD) www.ijmrd.info, Volume 01, Issue 01, Summer 2015
A REVIEW OF THE SOCIOECONOMIC IMPACTS ON FEMALE-HEADED
HOUSEHOLDS FOR TEMPORARY LABOUR MIGRATION TO MIDDLE EAST
FROM BANGLADESH
Khan Ferdousour Rahman1
ABSTRACT
Migration is a multi-facetted experience that often leaves considerable positive and negative impacts
on both the sending and receiving societies, and Bangladesh is not an isolated case in this regard.
Temporary labour migration has become an alternative livelihood scope for the country. With social
and economic development, temporary labour migration is having both positive and negative impacts
in the society. Apparently migration means remittance and remittance means economic well-being of a
household, but it is not known how women’s exclusion is reinforced by migration within riches. After
the migration of the husband, the workload of the any female spouse increases; at the same time enjoys
autonomy and freedom. This article looks for the socioeconomic impacts on female-headed households
for temporary labour migration to Middle East from Bangladesh. It is basically grounded upon the
content analysis of literature review.
Keywords: Migration, remittance, well-being, household, Middle East etc.
1
Assistant Professor, State University of Bangladesh, E-mail: ferdous3820@yahoo.co.uk
Khan Ferdousour Rahman
120
Introduction
Labour migration has become an alternative livelihood scope for Bangladesh due to gradually shrinking
of agriculture sector, huge population, lack of employment and severe poverty (Rashid, 2015). As such
migration has become a key development issue with an estimated 250 million migrants remitting to
their families back home US $ 416 billion last year (Bdnews24.com, April 30, 2014). Over the past four
decades, Bangladesh has evolved into one of the world’s leading emigration countries. Since the mid1970s, the country has experienced large-scale temporary migration of mostly unskilled migrants to
Middle East. This migration was primarily oriented towards Saudi Arab, but also increasingly towards
Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and other gulf countries. Despite its status as one of
the world’s leading emigration countries, empirical evidence from Bangladesh has been largely absent
from the lively general theoretical debate on how migration affects development in sending areas,
opposing ‘migration optimists’ to ‘migration pessimists’. Recent theoretical insights on migration and
development are largely based on micro studies done in elsewhere. Therefore, it has become necessary
to relate migration and development under the existing neoliberal practice in the perspective of
globalization.
International migration has emerged as a location-specific phenomenon (Faist, 2000) and has often been
seen as a short-cut to development by many sending countries because of its role in unemployment
relief, balance of payment (BoP) relief, and capital formation at national level. One in 35 persons is a
migrant worker in the world. Temporary labor migration is the predominant type of labor migration
found in Asia, whereby millions of left behind families maintaining a better living in their home
countries. Such migration has its own dynamic relationship with the social relations that play a part to
producing it because many migrants come and go at often regular intervals. Every year many people
from Bangladesh migrate to different countries of the world for non-skilled and semi-skilled work
leaving their spouses, children and other family members in the home country. In this South Asian
country remittance is one of the most important economic variables in recent times as it helps in
adjusting BoP, increasing foreign exchange reserves, enhancing national savings and increasing
velocity of money.
Bangladesh is not an isolated case in this regard (Rahman, 2005) as remittance has become the
governing wheel of its economy. Migration decreases the unemployment problem in Bangladesh, which
is the fifth largest remittance earning country in the world and hence remittance has become the
governing wheel of the economy. Four decades of intensive international temporary migration to
Middle East have fundamentally transformed Bangladeshi communities in general. Migration and
remittances has enabled the emancipation of formerly poor people, who have subsequently been able
to escape from the constraints of traditional peasant society. Apparently migration means remittance
and remittance means economic well-being of a household, but it is not known how women’s exclusion
is reinforced by migration within riches. However, the nature and types of exclusion of women varies
from household to household. With social and economic development temporary labour migration is
having both positive and negative impacts in the society (Afsar, 2002). The objective of this paper is to
review the socioeconomic impacts on women headed households for temporary labor migration in
Middle East from Bangladesh.
121
Literature Review
Migration is a multi-facetted experiences and often leaves considerable positive and negative impacts
on both the sending and receiving societies (Choudhury, 2012), which encompasses opportunities for
personal, social and economic development but also include risks of violence, abuse and exploitation
for the wives who are left behind in the home country. Traditionally migration refers to the movement
of people across the border leaving his familiar environment behind in the home country. Migrants’
people went abroad to provide better livelihood for his family (Pedraza 1991; Pessar and Mahler 2003).
Usually, people migrate and send remittance to the family which improves the livelihood condition of
the migrants’ family; this remittance can contributes to local economy and national development (Ratha,
2005). Migration from Bangladesh has a long historical matter and has always been a livelihood strategy
for many centuries (Siddiqui. 2003). According to Gardner and Ahmed (2006:7), from pre-colonial
times, migrants’ from the west settled the highly fertile but often waterlogged lands of the east, whilst
other historical evidence points to movement in the other direction, a continual flow of people,
regardless of national border. Samaddar (1999) shows the constant dreaming of the people for escaping
insecurity has made Bangladesh a land of fast footed people, people who would not accept the loss of
their dream rather would move on to newer and newer hands...” However, Rita Afsar has questioned
whether this type of migration is having any impact on the overall socio-economic condition of the
households or otherwise (Afsar, 2002).
The study of migration has a long history in social and cultural anthropology. Barnard and Kearney
(1997) provide introduction into the anthropological contributions to the interdisciplinary domain,
though the origin of the anthropological interest in migration can be found in the late 19 th century.
Gardner (1995) examines the cultural context and effects of long term migration from Bangladesh to
Britain and Middle East.
Today, these people are moving both internally (Van Schendel 2005) and overseas, predominantly in
the Gulf and to South East Asia (Abrar 2000, Siddiqui 2003, Mahmood 1991, Gardner 1995). The scale
of this movement is vast - from 1976 to 2002 official figures show that over three million Bangladeshis
migrated overseas mostly on short term contracts; but as the government banned women from certain
categories of labor migration, so they officially only make up one percent of this figure (Siddiqui, 2003).
Most of these studies show that the vast majority migrate as wage labourers, often become the most
vulnerable and lowly paid workers of the international labor market. Many migrants are reported to go
to abroad illegally, who face a number of difficulties such as chances of deporting, cheating and losing
money.
The themes in recent migrant literature vary, depending not only on the country of origin but also on
the pattern of the migration itself. The attention of first generation migrant literature is often directed at
the act of migration, the passage to another land, the reception in the emigration country, issues of
rootlessness and racism, nostalgia and longing. While some of these issues do crop up in second
generation migrant writing, it does so often in a much more morally complex way. Affiliations are more
ambivalent, there is recognition that global uprootedness is well a global phenomenon, and the focus,
in an odd way, is not on the country of origin or arrival, but in a community that does not fully belong
to either. Jhumpa Lahiri expresses this sense of feeling in exile more than once (Lahiri, 1999). Her first
book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, earned her critical notice as well as popular acclaim, not
122
to speak of a string of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. Having followed this up
with a novel The Namesake, a story about the trials of a young couple that moves from Kolkata to
Massachusetts, Lahiri returns to the short story format in Unaccustomed Earth. The eight stories in the
book revisit the themes of identity and acculturisation and grapple with the challenges of immigration
and exile.
Migration, apart from contributing to livelihoods, also is part of social networks, and is usually
consistent with communities’ values and norms (Kabeer 2002, Afsar 2000). Migration of individuals in
the developing world is part and parcel of family strategies for survival or mobility. Gardner and Ahmed
(2006) show that international migration is related with household wellbeing. They talk about how
internal migration and overseas migration are intertwined and how local and global are interrelated.
These literatures describe, first, how migration is determined by social structures with a focus on
household forms and gendered ideologies that are among the most important factors determining the
dynamics of migration. Second, these project the contribution migrants make to changing social
structures, by contributing to local economy and are related to the trope of gender, migration. Thereby,
much of the literature has linked migration to insecurity of the rural economy. There we find an analysis
of vulnerability structured by options and opportunities related with networks, e.g. labor migrants are
vulnerable to changes in labor demand, or returnees become vulnerable due to changes in political
economy, manifested (for example) in the forced repatriation from countries hit by the Middle East
crisis and during the recession; but not much emphasis on gender dimension of vulnerability.
Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) projected that lion’s share of remittance
came from Saudi Arabia though larger numbers of workers migrated to UAE and Oman (Daily Star,
December 28, 2012). According to this report, Bangladesh received 27 percent of remittance from Saudi
Arabia, while over 19 percent came from UAE and 2.4 percent from Oman. Since female-headed
households in Bangladesh are generally ‘male-absent households’ and since women in Bangladesh have
lower literacy rates, educational attainment, asset holdings, and access to credit, and higher levels of
malnutrition, morbidity and risks of mortality compared to men, female-headed households are likely
to have lower levels of income and a weaker asset-base than male-headed households. Indeed, this is
an argument that is commonly found in the policy literature. However, temporary labor migration is the
predominant type of labor migration found in Asia, whereby millions of left-behind families are
maintaining a better living in their home countries. Such migration has its own dynamic relationship
with the social relations that play a part in producing it because many migrants come and go at often
regular intervals.
In a review of 61 studies on headship and poverty, it has been found that female-headed households to
be disproportionately represented among the poor in 38 cases. In a similar study however, it has been
noted that the relationship between female headship and poverty is strong in only two out of ten
countries in their sample (Ghana and Bangladesh). The empirical evidence on the adverse impact of
female-headship on children’s welfare also lacks consensus. Several studies using data from the United
States and Latin America have indeed found that children from female-headed households experience
lower educational and occupational attainment, and in some countries, higher risks of teenage
parenthood. Other studies, however, argue that these apparent correlations arise due to pre-existing
disadvantages of families and are thus not causal in any way. Furthermore, evidence from several
developing countries in Africa and Asia suggest that children from female-headed households may have
higher schooling attainment than children from male-headed households.
123
Korale (1986) has shown the tendency of higher divorce rate among the migrants in Sri Lanka.
According to Abbasi and Irfan (1986), in Pakistan comparatively young female spouses of the male
migrants suffer from mental diseases, and the youth and teenagers of the migrants’ family become
addicted. But very little research has been done on female headed households in rural Bangladesh, while
according to BIDS Survey, as many as 9% of rural households are managed or headed by women
themselves.
However, the researchers can derive important insights from the findings of the existing small number
of studies. Naila Kabeer, in her paper, used key indicators to measure the gender dimensions of poverty,
which can help the researcher to identify the problems of female headed households (Kabeer, 1993).
She presented a conceptual framework for the analysis of poverty in terms of basic needs and resource
entitlements. Female headed households are anomalies, because they are required to fend for themselves
but society is not ready to cope with them. It was also shown in the findings that the reliance on social
relations is a crucial part of the survival strategy for this section of the community, as their access to
assets and employment are extremely limited. Kabeer’s framework allows the researcher to measure
such complex forms of poverty by understanding that
“the social relations of gender are at least as significant as those of property and class in generating
entitlement inequities the concept of ‘entitlements’ must be expanded to take account of gender as a
dimension in the process of poverty.”
Leela Gulati has shown that male labour migrating from Kerala of India to Middle East helped women
to break the social silence or separation and allowed them to communicate or to make around in the
greater space beyond their house (Gulati, 1993). It shows that the households are worse off compare to
other households in almost all aspects, where three indicators were used: (i) land owned by household,
(ii) economic dependency and (iii) age of the household. Lewis (1993) on the other hand has made an
attempt to classify the themes of the literature available on rural Bangladesh on female headed
households which includes: (i) the processes through which they are formed, (ii) the processes through
which they are changed; (iii) the importance of household access to non-material as well as material
resources; (iv) a framework for developing short-term practical strategies for provision of support, and
(v) guidelines for longer-term strengthening of policy. Haque (1984) conducted one of the pioneering
works on labour migration, who explains Bangladeshi labour migration to the Middle East from the
structural perspective. He identifies the patterns of labour migration and examines critically some of
the hypotheses concerning the positive implications on the labour sending society. He reports that the
hypotheses of positive effects of labour export on the underdeveloped countries are invalid when
concrete situations are analyzed. His analysis reveals that labour migration contributes to continued
exploitation. He links labour migration to the macro-organization of socioeconomic relations, the
geographic division of labour, and the political mechanisms of power and domination. Family and
village level researches conducted in the Third World context (Amin, 1997) confirm that structural
factors are of importance in causing individuals and groups to migrate. However, it must be pointed out
that if one is to understand the migration process, it is important to have an appreciation of the social
and cultural contexts within which these forces work and is perceived by the people involved.
Ali 1981 describes the trend of Bangladeshi migration to the Middle East. According to Afsar (2002),
majority of the temporary labour migrants meet the expenses for migration through taking loan from
different sources or by selling immovable property, which also have direct impact later on migrants’
124
income (remittance) at home. Islam (1993) examines the impact of remittance money on the household
expenses in Bangladesh, where causes of international labour migration from rural Bangladesh were
looked into. Islam and his colleagues mainly focus on the economic factors. Habib (1985) examines the
economic consequences of international migration for Bangladesh. Hossain (1986) examines the effects
of labour migration on the class structure of rural Bangladesh. The higher financial cost of migration to
the Middle East countries led him to conclude that Middle East migration was confined to the landed
classes in Bangladesh. He reports that migration to the Middle East was confined to those elements of
the population who have education, skills, wealth, and a substantial amount of land. He shows how
through migration the wealthier landowning class in the rural areas has consolidated and strengthened
its traditional position. His findings suggest that emigration, in reality, has functioned as a mechanism
to reinforce the age old class structure of rural Bangladesh.
With the work on labour migration, work on the permanent migration in relation to the home country
was also carried out side by side. For example, Gardner's (1992) work on Bangladeshi permanent
migration to London dealt with Londonis (Bangladeshis who live in London), their villages in
Bangladesh (mainly from greater Sylhet district), and the ways in which life there has been altered.
Gardner focuses the impact of Londoni migration on the village life in Bangladesh. Based on
ethnographical village study, she has showed the increasing dominance and importance of overseas in
village life there. More than economic changes, her focus was on the qualitative shifts in perception,
and outlook of local people, the ways in which social institutions have changed relationships between
groups and individuals, and the new culture of migration. She shows that migration has not led to
economic development in the sending area; instead it has prompted ‘migration mania’ - a situation
where foreign countries are invested in and glorified to the detriment of the homeland. In another work
(1995), she illustrates the local images of home and abroad in Bangladesh. She reports that while the
‘homeland’ refers to spirituality and religiosity, ‘abroad’ is linked to material bounty and economic
transformation, and local desire has become centred on travel abroad as the only route to material
prosperity. Her works broadly enrich the anthropological understanding of the effects of permanent
migration on the sending region.
Although Gardner dealt with permanent migration and its impact on the village life, her work provides
details about the perception of overseas migration by villagers. The concepts she developed (for
example, desh, bidesh, migration mania) are relevant for understanding temporary migration as well.
The involuntary migration from Bangladesh also catches the attention of researchers as the relationship
between the great November cyclone of 1970, and the subsequent the liberation war that led to one of
the largest (temporary) population displacement in history. He traces the history of involuntary
migration in this region, resulting from political turmoil, communal violence, and liberation war, and
discussed the problem of the refugees as well. The liberation war of 1971 displaced about 9 million
people who took refuge in neighbouring India. This was perhaps the largest incidence of forced
migration in human history resulting from a liberation war. In spite of having four decades of labour
migration experience, Bangladeshi labour migration has remained largely under-researched. Although
the family carries a huge weight in Bangladeshi society, the family perspective to migration research
has been largely ignored. The paramount influence of cultural factors is often overlooked in favour of
economic argument. There are some impact-studies. However, these studies have not adequately
focused on the outcome of migration for the migrants and their families by using data from both ends.
Therefore, this is important to study the filling in the dearth of Bangladeshi labour migration
125
scholarships by examining the socioeconomic impacts on female-headed households due to temporary
migration.
Brief Discussion
Reviewing the available literature it has been found that after the migration of the husband, the workload
of the any female spouse increases. Families who are ‘left-behind’ after the head of the household
migrates either head their own households, continue to reside in the homes of their in-laws, or migrate
back to their natal homes. Again, it has found that male migration has two types of effects on the
families. First, it has focused on women’s autonomy and freedom during her husbands’ absence.
Second, the negative impact on wives because she has to take on extra roles that they would not
normally undertake consequently her stress level has increased and also faced many difficulties which
usually they do not face in the presence of their husband.
Towards a Conclusion
This article dealt with theoretical perspective of Bangladeshi temporary migrant workers in Middle
East, which examined the relevant issues at the origin related to Bangladeshi labour migration, for
instance, the socio-economic status of female-headed households. It attempted a comprehensive
analysis of Bangladeshi labour migration by pursuing one-end approach - the sending end. It suggested
that the experience of migration itself has increasingly become the most important determinant of family
status. Four decades of intensive international migration have fundamentally transformed Bangladeshi
society to a great extent, which has become an all-pervasive phenomenon that has also affected the
perceptions and increased aspirations of Bangladeshis. There is substantial evidence that migration and
remittances has enabled the emancipation of formerly poor socio-eeconomic groups escape from the
constraints of traditional peasant society, often to the detriment of ancient elite groups. A detail study
is needed to more deeply explore the issue as per this review study.
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