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Political Economy of Labor Migration Governance in Bangladesh

Corresponding Author : Md Mahbub Alam (Mahbub-pss@sust.edu)

Authors : Ashis Kumer Banik (Ashis-soc@sust.edu), Syeda Ismat Ara Jahan (siajsust@gmail.com)

Keywords : labor migration, governance, political economy

Abstract :

Labor migration has been the second highest source of Bangladesh's economy. There has been a growing trend in labor migration from Bangladesh since 1980s, but the nature and process of governance in the origin has been inadequate. In 1976, a total of 6087 people migrated for overseas work where 42 district level offices were functioning to serve the labor migration process. In 2020 the number of labor migrants reached 217,669 but the number of district level governing mechanism remained the same. As most of the migrants are rooted in rural areas, the governing mechanisms were needed to be truly decentralized. This work explains why and how the governing mechanisms for labor migration has been centralized. Different Ordinance, Laws, and rules that were framed under different regimes for migration governance have been studied to meet the objective. This study finds that, irrespective of the nature of political regimes, there has been a lack of willingness to arrange an easy, smooth, and less-expensive governing process for the grassroots migrants.

Published on December 30th, 2022 in Vol 33 Issue 2, Social Sciences