From Livelihoods to a Good Life: Rethinking the Migration and Development Nexus in Rural Bangladesh

Abstract

For decades, sending labourers (expatriates) overseas to earn remittances has been a key development strategy in Bangladesh and an essential source of livelihood for households in expatriates’ home communities. These communities use remittances to construct a more commercial and diversified economy encompassing diverse methods of making a living, distinct from traditional agricultural production. However, the pathway towards “development” is not always simple. Remittances and their influences are entangled with wider socioeconomic, climatic and environmental factors as well as the process of developing capitalist modernity in Bangladesh. Based on ethnographic research in a rural area of Chattogram District which has a half-century history of sending migrants to Gulf countries, this thesis investigates the nexus of migration and development, mainly using participant observation and interviews conducted with mostly male interlocutors (and their family members) who either were, or are, working in Gulf countries.

The thesis rethinks the context of Bangladesh’s remittances and the rural economy from Narotzky and Besnier’s viewpoints of crisis, value and hope. It also explores the migration-development nexus using de Hass’s capability-aspiration framework, sustainable livelihoods frameworks and Bourdieusian theories. I argue that endeavours to sustain livelihoods are essentially efforts by rural Chattogram Bangladeshis to achieve social reproduction, meaning family continuity, the maintenance of wellbeing across generations and the reproduction of social organisation. At the same time, livelihoods remain in flux and keep transforming through the adoption of strategies to cope with crisis and to maintain social values; these also reflect the struggles of Bangladesh towards capitalist modernity. Finally, by documenting people’s aspirations relating to migration, this thesis suggests that people’s perceptions of a good life go beyond the logic of simply making a living but also reflect their desires for imagined lifestyles perpetuated by circulating ideals within local communities.