Skilled migrant workers send more remittances home than less-skilled ones: IOM study

Higher skilled migrant workers send more remittances home than the less-skilled ones as the experienced workers are employed in better jobs, an IOM study has found.

The study also revealed that due to lack of work experience and financial knowledge migrant workers face vulnerable situations.

The findings were disclosed on International Day of Family Remittances on Tuesday through a press release, issued from Dhaka office of International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

IOM, the UN’s migration agency, urged the communities to support the reintegration and combat stigmatisation of returning migrant workers to Bangladesh.

Due to the economic and labour crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are expected to return by the end of the year. It will impact not only remittance-receiving households but also their extended communities, it said.

The research on ‘Migration, Family Remittances, Assets and Skills Categories in Bangladesh’ conducted in 2019 on 1,000 remittance-dependent households and qualitative discussions with key stakeholders.

The economic return on migration is lower in Bangladesh than countries with a skilled-migrant workforce, the research said.

In 2019, US$18.32 billion was remitted to Bangladesh, the third-highest recipient of remittance in South Asia.

Remittance inflow squarely impacts socio-economic development in Bangladesh.

Remittances were generally used to meet short-term needs and were rarely used to diversify assets or build financial resilience, which further increased the households’ dependence on remittances.

Low financial literacy of the migrants and their families placed them in a precarious situation in terms of income stability, remittance management, and assets building, the study showed.

The findings said Bangladeshi migrant workers and remittance senders were overwhelmingly men (98 per cent), about 12 per cent of migrant workers did not attend school and nearly 80 per cent did not continue study after secondary school.

Of the surveyed migrant workers, half worked as employees for a firm or company (49 per cent) and nearly one-quarter (26 per cent) worked as labourers.

A total of 65 per cent of those households were headed by women who were likely to be unemployed and who generally invested remittance in non-income generating activities, the findings showed.

The research recommended investing in the gender-responsive skills development sector and building the financial literacy and remittance management capacity of households.

There should be an investment in education and skills upgrade so that lower-skilled migrant workers can earn more and break the cycle of debt.

Addressing the research findings, Giorgi Gigauri, chief of mission, IOM Bangladesh, said, “Now more than ever we need to focus on supporting remittance-dependent communities who are impacted by the recession.

“We need to support the government to prioritise skills development of migrant workers so they can increase remittance flow to Bangladesh,” he said.

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