one hand, and on its investments in household’s (human and physical) resources and saving
management strategy on the other. Therefore, when farm household resources are scarce (i.e.
credit and risk constraints are binding), not all households are able to send migrants to work
in a different market and even when they do so, it is not straightforward whether migration
will result in a virtuous strategy - able to help relatives left behind to overcome production
constraints and improve agricultural productivity- or in a poverty-trap. The body of economic
literature that generally tends to conclude that migration is a subsistence strategy enabling
households to escape poverty, fails to consider people not able to migrate and those who
experience a poverty-trap because of migration.
3. Migration flows in Bangladesh
In the past 25 years Bangladesh has experienced positive economic and social change.
Nonetheless, it remains among the least developed countries.
Historically migration has been a common subsistence strategy of Bangladeshi people, strictly
correlated with colonialism. Long term permanent migration takes place typically towards the
UK or US, although over time rigid immigration policies in western countries have limited
further emigration from Bangladesh. During the 1970s the labour markets in the Middle East
offered new scope for Bangladeshi migrant labour, and later such migration also expanded to
the newly industrialised countries of South East Asia.
Between 1976 and 2002 more than 3 million Bangladeshis have emigrated overseas for
employment. Over the past 5 years, though, migration has declined due to substantial
increases in the cost of migration and stiff competition from new sending countries.
Determinants of both short and long-term migration are complex, resulting of many factors
representing economic, social and cultural realities. According to official figures, international
migrants are predominately young male, and female accounts for only 1%. This is so because
the Bangladeshi government has banned certain types of female labour from independent
emigration but many choose to do so through unofficial channels.
The labour force of Bangladesh working in different parts of the world is primarily made up
of unskilled and semi skilled workers. In 2001 the professionals constituted only the three
percent of the migrant worker against the 58 percent of unskilled workers (ILO).
Over the last decades, also domestic migration has resumed greater importance as a
component of people’s subsistence strategies and in shaping the national economy. According
to recent surveys by the United Nations, International Labour Organization and the
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), rural to urban migration in Bangladesh accounts for