Is migration inevitable?

The promised land for Bangladeshi migrants?

In the sphere of migration, a remarkable matter is the recent trend of emigration from the East to the West. The West, with its proportionately low population density, high economic growth, decent law and order situation, social safety net, developed and modern infrastructure, and so on, has been appealing to the people of the East, who are, both at national and marginal levels, squeezed between innumerable cruxes including unfulfilled elementary needs, deteriorating law and order situation, lack of social security, appalling unemployment crisis, etc.

Not until a number of highly educated and consequently skilled fortune-hunters started emigrating to the West progressively in the 1980s had the recent inclination to emigrate been so popular among the highly educated strata of society. Before this, migration was fashionable mostly among people from uneducated or underprivileged socio-economic and familial milieu. Many critics may raise a question: what, in fact, happened in the 1980s that made migration so popular.

Until the 1980s, the socio-economic trend of Bangladesh was austerity-based. Most people at the marginal level were, on average, satisfied with what they had and what they could earn. Very few people were more ambitious, unable to eke out their earnings.

But the flutter of globalisation created such a generation-gap between the preceding and the following generations that the new generation began to be more and more ambitious as well as unsteady -- which impelled it to abandon itself to a spendthrift attitude.

One should not deem workforce-export and migration as the same thing. The process of workforce-export is, in fact, not such a significant matter that can influence the incumbent socio-economic order by any means, whilst the process of "migration" can do that. Although almost all the sojourners -- more or less -- tend to contribute to the country's economy by remittance, yet, the exported workforces are weightier than the emigrants are in this sphere.

Exported workforces are those who have gone to foreign countries -- especially to the Middle East -- just temporarily, paid not too much in comparison with their average earning possibilities in Bangladesh, while emigrants are, in contrast, those who have settled down in the industrialised countries. The latter category has, no doubt, been coining a snobbish trend throughout the entire socio-economic order of the country, notwithstanding playing an imperative role in the country's economy.

Whether remittance is popular is, no doubt, a dilemma we may often be confronted with. Statistics express that remittance has been playing an affirmative role in the country's economy. The Bangladesh Economic Survey, 2005 states that the remittance sent from foreign countries to Bangladesh in the fiscal year 2003-04 amounted to $3.372 billion, while it amounted to $3.197 billion up to April 2005 in the fiscal year 2004-05. The following diagrams may, however, express an overall illustration of remittance sent to Bangladesh from several countries in the fiscal year 2003-04 and country-wise migration rate in 2004.

The first diagram shows that in the fiscal year 2003-04 the highest amount of foreign currency came to Bangladesh from Saudi Arabia (41 percent). Although the next position belongs to the US (14 percent), yet the difference is noteworthy. In contrast, the UK, in which the Bangladeshi emigrants are assumed to be living with great influence, has a very small contribution in the sphere of remittance (9 percent only). The emigrants not only in the UK but also in all other industrialised countries (e.g. Canada, Australia, Japan, and so on) too seem to be playing just a trifling role in sending foreign currency to Bangladesh. Except for the US and UK, no other industrialised countries have even been individually presented in the above-referenced economic survey; they may be included in "Others" category. On the contrary, the second diagram also shows that in 2004 the greatest number of migrants went to Saudi Arabia (51 percent), Arab Emirates (17 percent), and Kuwait (15 percent), not presenting individually how many migrants, in fact, emigrated to the industrialised countries.

Sending foreign currency is deemed as the leading contribution of the emigrants. As both "balance of trade" and "balance of payment" have always been against Bangladesh because of its hard-up financial condition, the Taka has also been always undervalued. Consequently, whatever amount of foreign currency is remitted to Bangladesh turns to be a remarkable amount, which enables the emigrants to lead a showy lifestyle while they are visiting Bangladesh. Even a blue-collar worker serving abroad can earn much more than a white-collar worker serving in Bangladesh can, because of the poor quality of the Taka in comparison with foreign currencies.

Among emigrants, the blue-collar workers, no doubt, outnumber the white-collar workers. Yet, the inclination of emigration has been increasing continuously. Here a question may rise: why this is happening. The answer is implied in the tug-of-war between austerity and snobbery, which started via petrodollars coming from the Middle East and is now institutionalised as well as intellectualised in the new economic world order now run by the Western bloc. The more days are passing, the more snobbish human lifestyles are becoming. Unlike in the past, most people, at present, can no longer remain satisfied with what they have already had and what they can earn, as they now can realise that they are living in an outstandingly opulent world, of a kind that would have hardly even been imagined just a few years ago. The sumptuous lifestyles of various developed countries are now brought into everyone's homes, since by dint of the extreme amelioration of knowledge, science, and technology --especially of information technology -- the different regions of the globe are today more closely interlinked than they have ever been.

Only statistical calculations, of course, cannot present how much Bangladesh indeed gains from migration. The direct contribution that Bangladesh gains from migration is remittance, which increases and/or stabilises the reserve of foreign currencies. Remittance is obviously a popular contribution with some unpopular consequences. Anyone cherishing a positive outlook toward migration as well as remittance may soliloquise about the unpopular consequences of remittance. One cannot but ponder remittance just as a statistical contribution, if one mulls over the non-economic elements emerging from remittance, which manipulates the country's socio-economic condition. For instance, first, remittance, regardless of its contribution to the reserve of foreign currency, plays an inextricable function in augmenting inflation. Second, remittance may be liable for hurting the socio-economic stability of the country, owing to the substantial difference in value between Taka and foreign currencies. Third, remittance has been fashioning a snobbish trend in the socio-economic orderliness.

Nevertheless, the more days are passing, the more interested people from various quarters are becoming in migration, as we have, in the Third World, been living in a condition beleaguered with incredible paucity and deprivation, unfulfilled elementary needs, infringement of rudimentary political freedoms as well as of basic socio-economic liberties, and so on.

Irrespective, both in legal and illegal ways, even bearing life-threatening risks, many fortune-hunters are nowadays desperate to emigrate. Austerity-based patriotism practiced by the foregoing generation, especially during the 1960s to 1970s, is now trounced by ambitious fortune-hunters of the prevailing new generation, for whom their own aspirations are more valuable than the hollow chauvinistic shibboleths of the past.

The author is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.