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Migrant absorption in formal sector employment: the case of the Dhaka region jute industry

Banu, Salma

Authors

Salma Banu



Abstract

This research concerns migrant workers in the jute manufacturing industry of Bangladesh. The absorption of labour into industry from the surplus rural population is a major feature of the social and economic transformation of developing countries. Although there is a considerable amount of geographical literature on urbanisation in the Third World, the approach is often a general one, which fails to take sufficient account of industrial employment as the source and cause of broader social processes. The emphasis of this study, therefore, is the migrant as factory worker: his social experience and attitudes, his origins and his way of life. The social and economic approach of this research is based on a comparison of a sample of migrants and non-migrants among the workforce of the jute mills.
The study has been done through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. It reveals that there is a conflict between an official desire to develop a modern, industrial workforce and the nature of economic and social provision, particularly of housing, which acts to keep the migrant workers rooted in the countryside. The ties with the countryside - through tenure, culture, family and religion - remain strong in Bangladesh.
Nevertheless, the thesis concludes with the assessment that the migration process is an important social element in city growth and in the modernisation of the nation. The findings confirm the urgent need to provide at least minimum facilities for the migrant labourforce and to protect the jute industry from synthetic substitutes which can only increase future employment uncertainty. This study also emphasises the immediate need to reduce the extent of unemployment and underemployment by promoting suitable employment opportunities through the acceleration of economic diversification.


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