Bangladeshi women migrants amidst the COVID‐19 pandemic: Revisiting globalization, dependency and gendered precarity in South–South labour migration

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented societal disruption and disproportionately affected global mobility dynamics. Within such a troubled and intensifying crisis, the intersection of migration and gender is even more unsettling. Since the pandemic outbreak, Bangladesh witnessed a colossal crisis among millions of Bangladeshi migrants working overseas—a considerable section of them are women. By highlighting the plight of the Bangladeshi women migrants in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, this study expands the emerging literature that addresses the nexus among migration, pandemic fallout and gendered labour. Redrawing our understanding of globalization from below, the study attempts to further advance the theoretical perspectives on the predicaments of globalization and gendered precarity in contract labour migration. The study argues that the focus on the power asymmetry between the host and sending countries remains too limited to provide a comprehensive understanding of how inequalities are reproduced and transformed. Instead, it suggests that the challenges and disadvantages women migrants endure are embedded in the asymmetries of deep‐rooted economic and social structures in tandem with the systemic practice of otherness and exclusion.

“The pandemic has added to my miseries”: Bangladeshi migrant workers’ social protection revisited

“…While many workers with regular job contracts and stable incomes have been exposed to a situation of “absolute unpreparedness” ( Lo and Hsieh, 2020 ), protection needs demand a gender analysis. However, “an isolated view on gender obscures the relationality and internal differentiation of social categories which operate alongside intersectional hierarchies” ( Bilecen et al, 2019 : 2), since it operates with other markers of difference, such as ethnicity, age, marital and education status, and social class ( Ansar, 2022 ). As such, gender needs to be understood within “the set of mutually constitutive structures and practices which produce gender differentiation, gender inequalities, and gender hierarchy in a given society” ( Orloff, 1996 : 52).…”

“…Amid various state-led support programs, migrants received little attention during the peak of the pandemic in their countries of origin and destination ( Gentilini, 2021 ). This is demonstrated through migrants’ forced deportation, arbitrary dismissal, and exclusion from social service schemes launched by many receiving states in the aftermath of the pandemic ( Ansar, 2022 ; Menon and Vadakepat, 2021 ). Moreover, the remittance sent by the migrant workers is a ‘crucial lifeline’ for at least 800 million relatives living back home in low- and middle-income countries.…”

“…With emerging research starting to document the manifold impacts of the pandemic on the lives and livelihoods of Bangladeshi migrants (i.e. Ansar, 2022;Jamil and Datta, 2021;Karim et al, 2020;Siddiqui, 2021a), the larger context of persistent gaps in the existing labor migration policy and social protection mechanisms and crisis preparedness by the states is largely missing from the analysis.…”

Covid‐19 and Global Networks: Reframing our understanding of globalization and transnationalism

“…The authors conclude that the episode revealed challenges for the Canadian government to support international students in the future. Ansar (2023) offers a different perspective on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on a contrasting group of international migrants, Bangladeshi women migrants living and working in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The research offers new theorical insights into the junctures between globalization 'from below' , migration and gendered labour.…”

“…The accepted papers offer both significant individual contributions, but also as a collective, a deep understanding of how the challenge of Covid‐19 reconfigures contemporary globalization, international migration, transnationalism, supply‐chains, and ensuing global networks across society. Broadly speaking, the papers covered several inter‐related theoretically and evidence‐based topics from international migration, mobilities, and proximity (Ansar, 2023 ; Hari et al., 2023 ) to transnational immobilities (Kempny, 2023 ; Simola et al., 2023 ; Skovgaard‐Smith, 2023 ) to diasporic and transnational communities (Ceccagno & Thurø, 2023 ; Müller, 2023 ; Yamamura, 2023 ) and forced labour in global value chains (Hughes et al., 2023 ). Collectively, the authors should be highly commended for their resilience and inventiveness in completing original empirical work during a period of unprecedented disruption for themselves, their subjects and their institutions.…”