Weekend-5-16

land
If we had not been lying
down, we should surely have
been shot. The walls were
completely pockmarked
month until the civil war that would overthrow
Gaddafi broke out.
Kamal found himself trapped in a lawless
state. At one point he was kidnapped and
thrown in a freight container with no windows.
His kidnappers gave him a cell phone to
procure his own ransom, and a 250ml bottle of
water. For three days he suffocated in the heat
with nothing else to eat or drink.
After getting free, Kamal attempted to flee
to Italy by boat but got arrested off the coast
of Malta and was voluntarily repatriated. “We
paid off some family debts. Most of the money
I sent back went into day-to-day expenses. On
the whole, it would have been better not to
have gone at all.”
Photo: Courtesy
Presently we are joined by a Kamal’s friend
and a random passer-by, both of whom have
migration stories to share.
Neither hunger nor depravity drove the
people to emigrate. But Manda offered little
opportunity to change the circumstances they
were born into. Their families would only ever
have better homes or a higher education if
they went abroad.
This might be because economic growth has
been largely concentrated in urban centres.
Even so, most of those seeking to enter Europe
are from semi-urban backgrounds.
Jillur, for example, broke out of his rural
economy by obtaining a driver’s license and
finding employment with the founders of the
Refugee and Migratory Movements Research
Unit (RMMRU) in Dhaka. But to fulfil his
aspirations, he would have to use his driver’s
license to get work abroad.
“I applied to go to Algeria, then Qatar, then
Malaysia,” says Jillur. “None of them worked.
After trying and failing for over two years I got
frustrated.” He settled on the illegal route to
Italy.
“Everyone has a dream of going abroad,”
says Dr Tasneem Siddiqui founder and director
of RMMRU, “They feel that it will result in a
holistic change, [a promotion in] class, which as
it is, is not possible in Bangladesh.”
His second child was born just before he
left. Jillur was earning about Tk.12,000 per
month at the time. If he wanted to give his
new born daughter a different life, he had no
choice.
“Here, at the very best, I could earn Tk20,000
to 30,000 a month,” says Jillur. “How many
years would it take to save enough to even
begin to build a house with that? [In France],
once I get citizenship, earning more than one
lakh taka a month is no big deal for a person
like me.”
The chances of that kind of success are
slim. Thousands of deaths are recorded each
year in the Mediterranean, and many more
go unreported. Many irregular migrants are
apprehended by Libyan forces before they can
reach Italian waters.
“It’s a risky game,” says Dr Siddiqui. “But for
some people, it has worked out very well.” Dr
Siddiqui says she met a Bangladeshi migrant
who earned the equivalent of three lakh taka
a month in 2010 doing heavy labour work.
But most people have to struggle for years
before they can establish themselves and start
sending money back home.
WEEKEND TRIBUNE | FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 2017
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