Migrant workers and well-off expatriates
Saturday, 6 October 2007
Hasan Mahmud
AT present, there are approximately 0.3 million of non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) living in the UK and 0.2 million in the US. There are some other living in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other developed countries. They are quite well-off, educated-middle-class people. They earn considerably higher than the migrant workers but send very little remittances.
Such NRBs are condemned for not engaging themselves in the national development project of Bangladesh. There are two assumed reasons for the well-off expatriates to be reprobated: first, that they do not care about sending money back and thus unwilling to contribute to Bangladesh economy as a whole, and secondly, they do not wish to come back and even to visit! For them '…this country doesn't exist anymore.' But why do they not engage in the development activities in Bangladesh?
"The environment for business doesn't exist in this country" for a businessman, or that "I am sorry there isn't enough material for a serious scientist like me to live in Bangladesh" for an academician. Can anybody deny these facts? There are tens, if not hundreds, of incidences that a well-off NRB who comes back home and tries to invest the wealth s/he earned abroad (such an effort essentially qualifies to be patriotic if one wishes to judge). But the enthusiastic entrepreneur finds the whole market is almost closed due to several social and political barriers known to all.
Who will ensure a favourable market that allows him/her gain from such an endeavour? Does this responsibility, too, go to those expatriates who worked hard in the foreign land to bring capital, or to those who live in Bangladesh?
For the scientists, or broadly academicians, there are many incidences too that they failed to get back with a moderate appointment in Bangladesh. There is hardly any opportunity for those, who are cut off from the network that decides whom to recruit, in finding a job comparable to what they have already managed abroad. Then why should they come back in such uncertainty?
If we keep going on thinking that the competent expatriates are necessarily escapees, lacking patriotism, we will eventually head to the conclusion that patriotism is exclusively a matter to be nourished by those who are doing well abroad. I rather consider that the expatriates are more patriots than they were before in Bangladesh.
The NRBs think over considerable period of time and devote to activities for Bangladesh, for Bangladeshi people. This is a human tendency that instigates people to visualise the past in favourable terms, in ways that provide 'a sense of comfortable yet past' living so that s/he can escape the boredom and/or sufferings of present life. This is the way people make their own community which is essentially imagined.
Patriotism is the passion that attaches people to their imagined community. I call Bangladeshi community imagined because all the nation states are essentially imagined communities. We certainly do never meet most of the Bangladeshis, nor visit much of the territory; yet we feel for all, we consider we share much of our culture, our aspiration, our history under the single umbrella -- Bangladesh.
What this debated issue indicates is that there are differences among the 'imagined Bangladesh' of the expatriates and that of those living in Bangladesh. Still there are differences of this 'imagined Bangladesh' among the later in line with various socio-cultural parameters. Then, what holds for the accreditation of such differences? This is the holistic approach required for the development of Bangladesh.
All through human history, no group/community/nation (nation state is relatively a new term for human groups whose emergence dates back to less than 100 years) could develop without concerted effort, without participation of all members of the community. Since the ancient Greeks and Romans, medieval Muslims, modern West -- Europeans, and recently, the East Asian nations -- all have experienced development by means of total participation. And it is the lack of total participation that the medieval China and India failed to retain sustained development in spite of their huge resources.
The discourse, in the media and the academia, in Bangladesh is creating a polar opposite way of identification and prioritises one segment of the remittances earners -- the migrant workers, while denigrates the NRBs -- the comparatively more potential segment, and thus throwing them out of the realm of concerted participation in national development project. The discourse erroneously attempts to give voice to the seemingly real patriot, the 'desperate poor' and condemns the escapist expatriate, none of which does qualify to exist in reality.
All the migrant workers are opportunistic as much the same way as the expatriate does. Yet they both hold potentials to contribute to the development of Bangladesh. The migrant workers have social network through their families to invest their money in Bangladesh, but their savings are likely to be dwarfed by that of the affluent expatriates who may lack this social network (because their families settle abroad) and hence refrain from engaging in the development of Bangladesh. But such an Orientalist way of identification blurs these potentials as a whole. Instead what it facilitates is the secured dominance of the established status-quo in Bangladesh that includes much of the leaders in politics, business and academia that invite the workers and NRBs only to send remittance so that these parasites can exploit the whole nation as they have been doing since time immemorial.
The present discourse allows the migrant workers to participate, but only in a passive role of sending remittance. Since they are depicted as poor, they do not qualify to have the ability to participate actively, to decide on how and where to invest their money in Bangladesh, and thus require the expert-hands who generally advise to invest in unproductive sectors (for example- purchasing land or house) that aids almost nothing to national economic development than to augment the private property of the existing business elite. On the other hand, the well-off NRBs' wish to participate actively in productive sectors entails a threat to the established status quo in that the former might replace the later. Hence the opposition to their direct participation and identification with negative connotations so that they might forbear to unleash such threat.
It is altogether naïve to identify the NRBs who have settled abroad, doing well and not showing willingness not get back to Bangladesh in the same way as the discourse does. Because they have been participating in every occasion they find to contribute to their motherland. For example, numbers of websites are devoted in collecting money from the NRBs to help the flood-trodden Bangladesh; many of the NRB groups are participating directly in the political and social development initiatives in Bangladesh by generating nobel ideas; all NRB communities celebrate every social and cultural occasion abroad and thus playing the role of the ambassador of the country. Even the second generation NRBs (who even cannot speak Bangla properly) visualise their imagined Bangladesh as the ultimate land of destination to which they identify themselves.
Therefore, we must recognise that much of the developmental potential lies in other aspects along with mere remittances. And we need to develop a national policy for Bangladesh that would be efficient enough to tap all the potentials for development from both the migrant workers and the NRBs.
..........................................................
The writer is a Monbusho Scholar in the Global Studies Programme, Sophia University, Japan and may be reached at '[email protected]'
— Concluded
AT present, there are approximately 0.3 million of non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) living in the UK and 0.2 million in the US. There are some other living in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other developed countries. They are quite well-off, educated-middle-class people. They earn considerably higher than the migrant workers but send very little remittances.
Such NRBs are condemned for not engaging themselves in the national development project of Bangladesh. There are two assumed reasons for the well-off expatriates to be reprobated: first, that they do not care about sending money back and thus unwilling to contribute to Bangladesh economy as a whole, and secondly, they do not wish to come back and even to visit! For them '…this country doesn't exist anymore.' But why do they not engage in the development activities in Bangladesh?
"The environment for business doesn't exist in this country" for a businessman, or that "I am sorry there isn't enough material for a serious scientist like me to live in Bangladesh" for an academician. Can anybody deny these facts? There are tens, if not hundreds, of incidences that a well-off NRB who comes back home and tries to invest the wealth s/he earned abroad (such an effort essentially qualifies to be patriotic if one wishes to judge). But the enthusiastic entrepreneur finds the whole market is almost closed due to several social and political barriers known to all.
Who will ensure a favourable market that allows him/her gain from such an endeavour? Does this responsibility, too, go to those expatriates who worked hard in the foreign land to bring capital, or to those who live in Bangladesh?
For the scientists, or broadly academicians, there are many incidences too that they failed to get back with a moderate appointment in Bangladesh. There is hardly any opportunity for those, who are cut off from the network that decides whom to recruit, in finding a job comparable to what they have already managed abroad. Then why should they come back in such uncertainty?
If we keep going on thinking that the competent expatriates are necessarily escapees, lacking patriotism, we will eventually head to the conclusion that patriotism is exclusively a matter to be nourished by those who are doing well abroad. I rather consider that the expatriates are more patriots than they were before in Bangladesh.
The NRBs think over considerable period of time and devote to activities for Bangladesh, for Bangladeshi people. This is a human tendency that instigates people to visualise the past in favourable terms, in ways that provide 'a sense of comfortable yet past' living so that s/he can escape the boredom and/or sufferings of present life. This is the way people make their own community which is essentially imagined.
Patriotism is the passion that attaches people to their imagined community. I call Bangladeshi community imagined because all the nation states are essentially imagined communities. We certainly do never meet most of the Bangladeshis, nor visit much of the territory; yet we feel for all, we consider we share much of our culture, our aspiration, our history under the single umbrella -- Bangladesh.
What this debated issue indicates is that there are differences among the 'imagined Bangladesh' of the expatriates and that of those living in Bangladesh. Still there are differences of this 'imagined Bangladesh' among the later in line with various socio-cultural parameters. Then, what holds for the accreditation of such differences? This is the holistic approach required for the development of Bangladesh.
All through human history, no group/community/nation (nation state is relatively a new term for human groups whose emergence dates back to less than 100 years) could develop without concerted effort, without participation of all members of the community. Since the ancient Greeks and Romans, medieval Muslims, modern West -- Europeans, and recently, the East Asian nations -- all have experienced development by means of total participation. And it is the lack of total participation that the medieval China and India failed to retain sustained development in spite of their huge resources.
The discourse, in the media and the academia, in Bangladesh is creating a polar opposite way of identification and prioritises one segment of the remittances earners -- the migrant workers, while denigrates the NRBs -- the comparatively more potential segment, and thus throwing them out of the realm of concerted participation in national development project. The discourse erroneously attempts to give voice to the seemingly real patriot, the 'desperate poor' and condemns the escapist expatriate, none of which does qualify to exist in reality.
All the migrant workers are opportunistic as much the same way as the expatriate does. Yet they both hold potentials to contribute to the development of Bangladesh. The migrant workers have social network through their families to invest their money in Bangladesh, but their savings are likely to be dwarfed by that of the affluent expatriates who may lack this social network (because their families settle abroad) and hence refrain from engaging in the development of Bangladesh. But such an Orientalist way of identification blurs these potentials as a whole. Instead what it facilitates is the secured dominance of the established status-quo in Bangladesh that includes much of the leaders in politics, business and academia that invite the workers and NRBs only to send remittance so that these parasites can exploit the whole nation as they have been doing since time immemorial.
The present discourse allows the migrant workers to participate, but only in a passive role of sending remittance. Since they are depicted as poor, they do not qualify to have the ability to participate actively, to decide on how and where to invest their money in Bangladesh, and thus require the expert-hands who generally advise to invest in unproductive sectors (for example- purchasing land or house) that aids almost nothing to national economic development than to augment the private property of the existing business elite. On the other hand, the well-off NRBs' wish to participate actively in productive sectors entails a threat to the established status quo in that the former might replace the later. Hence the opposition to their direct participation and identification with negative connotations so that they might forbear to unleash such threat.
It is altogether naïve to identify the NRBs who have settled abroad, doing well and not showing willingness not get back to Bangladesh in the same way as the discourse does. Because they have been participating in every occasion they find to contribute to their motherland. For example, numbers of websites are devoted in collecting money from the NRBs to help the flood-trodden Bangladesh; many of the NRB groups are participating directly in the political and social development initiatives in Bangladesh by generating nobel ideas; all NRB communities celebrate every social and cultural occasion abroad and thus playing the role of the ambassador of the country. Even the second generation NRBs (who even cannot speak Bangla properly) visualise their imagined Bangladesh as the ultimate land of destination to which they identify themselves.
Therefore, we must recognise that much of the developmental potential lies in other aspects along with mere remittances. And we need to develop a national policy for Bangladesh that would be efficient enough to tap all the potentials for development from both the migrant workers and the NRBs.
..........................................................
The writer is a Monbusho Scholar in the Global Studies Programme, Sophia University, Japan and may be reached at '[email protected]'
— Concluded