The Uncounted Cost Behind Remittance: Jonobhashyo Podcast Episode 1

Today, we wrapped up the recording of the very first episode of Jonobhashyo Podcast. This episode is not a celebratory narrative of migrant workers' economic contributions. Rather, it asks a fundamental question: who is actually bearing the price of that contribution, and who is failing to show accountability? I had the privilege of hosting the conversation.

Our guest for this episode was economist and researcher Dr. Mahtab Uddin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Dhaka and Honorary Research Director at the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM).

For over a decade, Dr. Mahtab has conducted extensive empirical research on Bangladesh’s labor market, employment dynamics, international labor migration, remittances, poverty, and structural inequality. Throughout his career, he has collaborated on labor market and migrant rights research projects with leading international agencies and development partners, including the International Labour Organization (ILO), International Development Research Centre (IDRC), International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). His scholarship spans migrant worker protections, fair recruitment pipelines, labor market structures, and decent work deficits, featured across numerous peer-reviewed journals and academic book chapters.

Dr. Mahtab completed his PhD as a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Manchester, UK. His doctoral dissertation investigated the profound impacts of international migration and remittances on rural household poverty, inequality, and economic welfare in Bangladesh, with a particular focus on how migrant families absorbed external shocks during massive crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.

We sat down together to interrogate the economic contributions of Bangladeshi migrant workers, the mortal risks they navigate, pervasive exploitation, and the constitutional responsibility of the state to safeguard their fundamental human rights.

The recent executions of Bangladeshi migrant workers Nazrul Islam and Sweety Akhter in Saudi Arabia served as a poignant opening point. We believe their tragedy reflects not only the severity of the destination country's legal system, but equally the systemic failure of our own state apparatus to monitor their welfare, hear their grievances in time, and provide proactive consular and legal aid.

Reminding our state of its duty toward its citizens abroad, our dialogue explored institutional capacity building for migrant welfare, high-level bilateral diplomatic negotiations with host nations regarding occupational health and safety, and targeted protection mechanisms for female domestic workers.

All too often, we label expatriate laborers as "Remittance Warriors" (Remittance Joddha) while treating them like automated cash dispensing machines. Public discourse remains obsessively fixated on monthly inflow tallies.

Yet the success of an international migration policy must never be judged solely by how many citizens board outward flights or how many billions of dollars return home.

How many workers labor under safe, dignified conditions? How many workplace complaints are successfully investigated and resolved? How swiftly do Bangladeshi embassies and consular missions intervene to deliver justice for a distressed citizen abroad? How many victims receive fair legal compensation? How many return home genuinely debt-free? These must become the primary governance metrics of national success.

When I opened our conversation with Dr. Mahtab Uddin regarding the executions in Saudi Arabia, his response split into two vital parts that anchored the structure of the entire episode. First, the evidentiary vacuum: what exact charges were leveled, and did they receive competent, fair legal defense? Crucially, our state lacks clear, verified answers to these questions.

Second, and in his view the most pressing institutional question: are our state institutions abroad functioning to protect citizens? One of his reflections continues to resonate: Have we built institutional capability to protect our workers abroad with even a fraction of the scale we built institutions to send them away?

According to BMET records, over 16 million citizens have migrated abroad between 1976 and 2025, with 1.13 million departing in 2025 alone. That year, remittances reached $32.8 billion. Yet gross figures obscure human reality: for a rural household sinking into multi-generational debt to send a child to the Gulf, the meaning of that $32.8 billion is radically different from the celebratory headlines in the capital.

Another revelation in the research challenges conventional assumptions: the unequal dividends of migration. While international migration reduces poverty, its benefits are far from equitably distributed. A household capable of raising 400,000 to 500,000 BDT can secure overseas employment; the poorest families cannot even afford the initial entry costs. Consequently, while aggregate poverty declines, income and wealth inequality widen.

The reality of female migrant workers demands urgent, dedicated scrutiny. BMET data shows that nearly 47 percent of female workers migrating from Bangladesh between 2004 and 2025 went to Saudi Arabia, predominantly as domestic household workers. Because their workplace is a private residence, standard labor inspections cannot penetrate. As Dr. Mahtab soberingly noted: many abused workers are stripped of their mobile phones and passports upon arrival—making it virtually impossible to dial an embassy helpline. That single fact lays bare the limits of conventional bureaucratic protection.

In my view, three key insights defined the strength of this episode:

1. Empirical Discipline: Dr. Mahtab maintained rigorous statistical boundaries—clarifying that Frontex data (13,417 to 22,353) represents detection events rather than unique individuals, and that 83,000 migrant deaths reflects a global aggregate, not solely Bangladeshis. Resisting sensationalism is rare and vital in modern broadcast debates.
2. The Airfare Disparity: A flight from Dhaka to Riyadh costs roughly 49,400 BDT, compared to just 24,700 BDT from Karachi. A single verifiable price differential provides an irrefutable diagnosis of structural predation.
3. The Trap of Debt: When workers finance recruitment through predatory loans, they lose the ability to flee abusive employers even when wages are withheld—the initial 12 to 24 months of earnings are consumed entirely by debt repayment.

While IOM estimates indicate that nearly 45 percent of workers rely on informal sub-agents (dalals) for information and transit logistics, Dr. Mahtab made a nuanced observation: not every intermediary is a fraudster, and understanding the social infrastructure of recruitment is essential to fixing it.

Who is this episode for?
Journalists covering labor migration, human rights advocates, non-governmental researchers, policy architects, and above all—prospective migrant workers and their families. Those seeking simplistic success stories or platitudes may look elsewhere. This dialogue offers no easy comfort; it presents rigorous questions and demands institutional accountability from the state.