Global atlas

Southern Asia · data through 2024

Bangladesh

Bangladesh sends a very large number of contract workers abroad, mainly to the Gulf and Malaysia, and hosts close to one million Rohingya refugees.

Twenty five year view

Movement in both directions

These lines show migrant stock, meaning people living outside their birth country at each point in time. They do not show annual arrivals.

Why people move

Leading documented drivers

  • • Recruitment fees financed by family debt and labour demand in the Gulf
  • • Flooding, salinity, and river erosion in coastal districts
  • • Limited formal jobs for a young workforce
  • • Established corridors to Malaysia and Singapore

Labour migration is organised through licensed and unlicensed recruiters, with fees that frequently leave workers in debt on arrival. Climate pressure in coastal districts is increasingly part of why households choose to send someone abroad.

Connections

Where movement connects

Common destinations

Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Italy

Common origins

Myanmar, India

Adapting and finding support

What helps

Debt taken on for recruitment shapes the first years abroad and reduces the ability to leave an abusive employer. Returning workers need recognition of skills gained overseas.

Use the government welfare board and licensed recruiter checks before paying anything to an agent.

Use the support guide

Research that explains this pattern

What the scholarship says

Behavioural economics

The journey already paid for

Once a family has sold land, borrowed money, or crossed a border, the money and risk already spent make turning back feel unthinkable.

People continue on dangerous routes past the point where they would have chosen them fresh, and debt shapes the years after arrival.

Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer on the sunk cost effect, 1985

Behavioural economics

Remittances as household insurance

A household sends one member abroad to diversify its income, so a harvest failure or a currency collapse at home no longer threatens everyone at once.

Money sent home rises after disasters and downturns, and migration decisions are made by families rather than by individuals.

Oded Stark and David Bloom, the new economics of labour migration, 1985

Behavioural economics

Scarcity and mental bandwidth

Living with too little money, time, or certainty consumes attention itself, leaving less capacity for planning and paperwork.

Missed appointments and delayed applications are effects of hardship rather than proof of carelessness.

Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity, 2013

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Support inside and beyond Bangladesh

Organisations people actually use

Wage Earners' Welfare Board

Welfare, insurance, and grievance support for Bangladeshi workers abroad and their families.

Overseas workers and their households

Open

Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training

Licensing of recruiters, training, and official pre departure processing.

Workers preparing to go abroad

Open

IOM country offices

Assistance, voluntary return, reintegration, and counter trafficking support through the local office.

Anyone moving, arriving, or returning

Open

These are public organisations. The project is not affiliated with them and cannot guarantee outcomes. Nothing here is legal advice or an emergency service.

Ask for support in Bangladesh

This is guidance and connection to organisations. It is not legal advice and it is not an emergency service.

Sources and reading

Bangladesh data in the UN DESA International Migrant StockBangladesh data in the IOM World Migration ReportBangladesh data in the Migration Policy Institute data hubUNHCR Global Trends

Figures are rounded published estimates. Causes and adaptation differ within every country and should not be read as a verdict about any person.