Bangladesh / South Asia

South Asia presents a diverse range of migration flows, including internal movements, international movements and those movements across borders. Reflecting this diversity, our work in this region is also multifaceted, covering internal and international migration, and linking them to livelihoods, social protection, changing intergenerational and gender relations, and migrant workers’ rights.

In Bangladesh, recent surveys show that all types of migration, internal and international, have increased significantly. AAmongst international flows, the region shows three distinct trends -- emigration for settlement to Europe, Australasia and North America; contract labour migration to Middle-Eastern and a few South-East Asian countries; and the movements of people in border areas. Though remittances have received some attention in policy making, migrants’ rights issues have been generally ignored. A number of research and policy advocacy activities are being conducted on accessing new avenues for overseas employment, migrant recruitment and preparation of migrants for deployment overseas; improvement of consular services and streamlining the labour recruitment industry.

Rural-urban migration is pronounced in the region, with the poor increasingly dependent on off-farm livelihoods. The social protection of temporary work migrants in India and Bangladesh, and issues around livelihoods and inter-generational equity are key concerns of two Migration DRC projectsour research.

Migration for work had been a predominantly male phenomenon in Bangladesh, till but more recently there has been growing demand, more recently for a female workforce in the garment factories set up in various parts of the country. The gendered and contextual choices made about migration in Bangladesh and India in terms of educational choices and outcomes constitutes the focus of another Migration DRC projectare another focus of our Centre.

The region also shows some movement of children for work. Migration DRC studies Our research on the migration of children seeks to understand the dynamics of intergenerational relations in child migrant households by identifying elements of cooperation and conflict in migration endeavours among child migrants working in the informal sector in Dhaka, and children in the food sector in Karnataka.