Migration, money and management

'Push' versus 'pull' factors

Experts attribute this movement to push and pull factors. Push factors tend to prevail in a regime of widespread unemployment, lack of farmland, famine or war at home so that people are pushed out of their households for searching physical and economic safety. The Great Depression (1929-39) could be a classic case of a push factor when hard times hit Americans and encouraged more residents to leave US than move in. Likewise, in the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of Africans were pushed out to neighboring countries because of famine and civil war.

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On the other hand, factors that attract immigrants -- or pull people from other countries -- include a booming economy, favourable immigration laws or free agricultural area where immigrants are required. For example, at present, the labour shortage of Japan is pulling record number of legal and illegal immigrants to fill in the low status, low paying and dangerous jobs that Japanese natives reject. USA or Canada sometimes invites willing immigrants to apply for residing in those countries. In Bangladesh, for example, non-farm activities are reported to pull agricultural labours in relatively high rewarding jobs. In all of these cases, a migration theory suggests that circumstances at the place of origin (such as poverty and unemployment) push people out of those places to other places that exert a positive attraction or pull.

A book with a difference

There were (and are) many studies on migration in Bangladesh. My memory recalls the works done earlier by Rita Afsar (BIDS), Professor Nazrul Islam (Dhaka University), Raisul Awal Mahmood (BIDS), Mahabub Hossain (IRRI) and other scholars that I sordidly miss to name now. In this column, however, I shall pick up few observations from a chapter of a forthcoming book "Rural Livelihoods system in Bangladesh: Changes and Challenges" by Dr Mahabub Hossain and co-authors. The analysis on migration in the book is based on information generated from two points, 1987 and 2000, covering 62 villages and more than 2000 randomly selected households from different ecosystems. The data have been generated by IRR/BIDS and IRRI/PETRRA. The book discussed migration among rural households -- within or outside the country. While a threadbare discussion on all the issues would not be possible today due to time and space constraint, I shall come back with the remaining ones in subsequent installments for the benefit of researchers, especially for students.

Magnitude of migration

Between 1987 and 2000, the proportion of rural households that embraced at least one migrant member increased from 24 per cent to 26 per cent. However, the proportion of households with domestic or internal migrants almost doubled while that of foreign migrants marginally fell. In terms of both adult members and population of the households, the size of migration increased significantly over the period.

Where and why?

Inter-district migration, however, declined drastically from about three-fourths of total migrants in 1987 to about 57 per cent in 2000. On the other hand, migration overseas increased more than four folds during the same period of time. Again, during 2000, about 52 percent of the migrants were reported to have migrated to reach jobs/services. The proportion was 34 per cent in 1987 implying, perhaps, that migration has increasingly been moving towards jobs. But over the same period, migration as wage labour declined from about 35 per cent to about 11 per cent. This possibly indicates, first, that economic desperations as a cause of domestic migration might have weakened over the periods and second, migrants move towards relatively more productive pursuits. However, domestic migration for economic reasons -- say, for jobs, wage labour and business all together -- stood at 66 per cent in 2000 compared to 77 per cent in 1987. It could mean that economic conditions of households have improved over the period (1987-2000) to reduce the extent of migration.

Who migrate?

Among the "unlucky households" -- having no migrant member -- about 56 per cent reported to own less than 0.2 ha of land (called functionally landless). The share of this group was about 49 per cent in 1987. This means that incidence of migration (especially domestic) among these households declined between 1987 and 2000. Whereas, incidence of migration increased for all other land owning households. Further, it is apparent from data that, overall, "poorest of the poor" in landownership scale witnessed a wane in migration over the years. And the decline came mostly from domestic migration -- from 38 per cent to about 35 per cent -- while foreign migration remaining almost the same. Between 1987 and 2000, the share of households at the top of landownership scale --having both domestic and foreign migrants -- declined and as a result, the share of non-migrant households in this group also increased over the period.

The picture is, however, different for small and medium landowning groups who witnessed a rise in migration during the same period of time. This implies that, over the years, migrants mostly hailed from these two groups of households. It could have so happened that land rich households started to send their members much earlier and thus reached almost a saturation point by 2000. Or, it could be that small and medium land owning households gained affordability in sending members to foreign countries in the face of falling costs of migration overseas or for other favourable factors.

The data presented thus, point to two developments that took place in the realm of migration in Bangladesh. First, migrant households in rural Bangladesh are not the "poorest of the poor" as generally perceived of. Generally, small and medium households experienced the exodus. And second, by and large, migration to overseas has been increasing over the years irrespective of the landownership groups. The increased remittances from overseas are one of the pointers to this phenomenon.

The finding might sound surprising given the theoretic presumption that poverty might have increasingly pushed poorer households to send members to work in other areas. But "push factor" does not seem to hold true for a large part of the poor rural households in Bangladesh. In fact, advent of modern technology in agriculture, a rise in land productivity and growing thickness in tenancy market might have propelled a pull-back. Therefore, some of the poorest of the poor households, possibly, postponed migrating towards an uncertain destination. It could be due to infrastrucutral development and NGO initiatives. Or, it might have so happened that very "temporary migration" by these poor households could not be captured by the data set.

Any way, the observations from the survey of 62 villages do not seem to be far from that elsewhere. In Vietnam also, empirical evidences suggest that migrants are not the poorest of the poor. In China too, it is not the poorest of the poor who are migrating. Data from India suggests that a bimodal wealth distribution prevails, with migrants clustering in both wealthier and poorer groups. There is, of course, a distinct tendency for poorer groups to move locally or seasonally.

Education and migration

First -- and the foremost perhaps -- females from migrant households have more participation in education than those from non-migrant households. And this applies for all stairs of education -- from primary to university. But compared to males, they are ahead at primary and secondary levels and this also applies for all groups of households. By and large, the working age members of the migrant households are more educated than non-migrant households' members.

The observations on school participation rate, education of household heads and education of working-age members simply point to a possible connection between migration and education. Perhaps, the increased income from remittances might have enabled households to devote more resources to education of household members.

Occupational status

About 58 per cent of the working members in non-migrant households are reported to embrace agricultural activities as primary occupation. This compares with 33 per cent for domestic migrant and about 29 per cent of foreign migrant households. Within agriculture, a large portion of the working members from non-migrant households are also observed to be involved as agricultural wage labour (16 per cent) compared to 9 per cent of domestic migrant households and 1 per cent of foreign migrant households. The figures thus show that agricultural wages selling households or poor households in rural context are mostly non-migrant households. Again, 52 per cent of the working force in non-migrant households embraces non-agricultural activities as primary occupation compared to 67 per cent and 71 per cent respectively for domestic and foreign migrant households. Among non-agricultural pursuits, services activities seem to dominate as primary occupation of migrant households. This is evident from the fact that nearly 60 per cent of working members of foreign migrant households and 36 per cent of domestic migrant households are reportedly engaged in services as the primary occupation.

The book also observes that workers from non-migrant households undertake multiple tasks for eking out a living. For example, workers from foreign migrant households seem to have only one dominant source of income per worker while workers of domestic migrant households appear relatively less specialised. However, the working members of non-migrant households seem to carry out multiple activities to shield off from the risks involved in income generation.

Income structure

For 2000, the per capita annual income is estimated to be US$ 447 for the foreign migrant households against US$ 313 and US$ 190, respectively, for domestic migrant and non-migrant households. The per capita income of foreign and domestic migrant households exceeds the national average, while per capita income of non-migrant households falls short of the national average. Relatively speaking, per capita income of foreign migrant households appears to be 1.4 times higher than domestic migrant households' income and 2.4 times higher than that of non-migrant households. Again, the per capita income difference between domestic migrant and non-migrant households stands around 40 per cent. The figures on per capita income reveal that migration is an important source of income differential among rural households.

Delving a bit deeper into the household income structure, the authors noticed that more than half of the income of non-migrant households originates from agriculture (mostly land-based). The share of the same is about 44 per cent for domestic migrant households and about 29 per cent for foreign migrant households. It appears that other than remittances, the major chunk of household income of migrant households follow from non-agricultural pursuits -- obviously it is more relevant for foreign migrants than domestic migrants. This is quite evident from the figures that more than 70 per cent of household income of foreign migrants comes from non-agricultural sources. The share is 56 per cent for domestic migrant households and 48 per cent for non-migrant households.

The growth of per capita income in the case of foreign migrant household is estimated to be 99 per cent between 1987 and 2000 or seven per cent per annum. Domestic migrant households witnessed a growth of 71 per cent over the same period or five per cent per annum and non-migrant households had it two per cent per year. The per capita income growth for both domestic and foreign migrant households ran much above the national average of per capita income and population growth rate while non-migrant households also performed better than national average growth in per capita income. The data thus show that, in rural areas, all households experienced a positive per capita income growth between 1987 and 2000 but for foreign migrants, the performance was most spectacular.

Concluding observations

It appears that the per capita income level and its growth, among households with members working abroad, have been at an enviable level. Our national objective should be to send as many people to foreign countries as possible. It does not require very sophisticated education nor does it need an abundance of wealth to vie for foreign jobs. Some efforts at providing vocational training, computer skills, house keeping, gardening etc. could supply the manpower needed for foreign countries. Bangladesh should have technical training centers at Thana level. Besides, the remitters should be rewarded through incentive package. In fact Bangladesh should target to become an exporter of services in the international market.

Migration helps fetch more money for households. But more migration needs a better management at policy level. But, what about the income inequality and poverty in those villages? An important issue that I hope to take up next.

Abdul Bayes is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.