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Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU)

Publish Date: 07 May 2024

The other side of development: Men’s overseas migration and disruption in family dynamics in migration-prone regions of Bangladesh

Mr. Kazi Shek Farid

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Men’s overseas migration from a traditional society may adversely influence the structures and functions of their left-behind families, despite its conventional economic benefits, which have not yet got due attention from migration researchers of Bangladesh. Therefore, this qualitative study examines the nature of disruptions in the dynamics of left-behind families in migration-prone regions of Bangladesh by generating data through in-depth interviews with left-behind wives of overseas migrants and focus group discussions and key informant interviews with multiple actors in the country’s most migration-prone Cumilla district. Family disintegration, marital conflict, and family indebtedness are conceptualised as disruptions in family dynamics through reflective thematic analysis of the data, considering ‘migration pessimism’ as the overarching theoretical framework. The widespread male migration abroad dismantles traditional joint and extended families and produces single-parent-type hybrid families in most cases, which poses challenges for the care of children, siblings, and parents who have left behind and increases the patriarchal vulnerabilities of their wives. Most importantly, we discovered disorganized relationships amongst family members including a disrupted marital relationship as some left-behind wives deceive their husbands by exploiting them economically and by engaging in extra-marital affairs. Many families fall into the vicious cycle of indebtedness, sometimes to cover the costs of migration and, most of the time, to support their extravagant spending habits. Moreover, unhealthy lifestyles of the members of migrant households are responsible for such disorders. In order to counteract the disturbance of their family dynamics, migrant families need awareness-raising programmes to help them adopt healthy lives and family relations.

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