1.0 Introduction
Bangladesh is a labor surplus country and this country contributes in the international labor market through temporary labor migration. People usually migrate internationally for better opportunity and financial wellbeing. But the pattern of migration is different according to socioeconomic status of migrants. Some are temporary and others are permanent migrants. Both categories of migrants send money to their country of origin, to their families, but the temporary migrants, often poor, sends more. Remittances have become the most powerful means to maintain relationship with migrants with their societies of origin. Remittances play a most important role in the accounts of many developing countries and are crucial to the survival of poor individuals and communities around the world. The emphasis of development policy is now firmly on poverty alleviation and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and remittances are playing a significant role to achieve some goals of MDGs.
According to Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET); up to December 2009 total approximately 8 million people migrated from Bangladesh from 1976 to 2009 to different countries. In 2008, total 875055 people migrated to different countries temporarily. Among them 132124 people migrated to Saudi Arabia, 419355 to U.A.E and 131762 to Malaysia (BMET website link: http://www.bmet.org.bd/report.html). Most of these people migrated for short-term employment like for 3 to 10 years. But usually this statistics doesn’t represent the information of permanent migrants or Diasporas to developed countries like USA, UK, Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. It is estimated that approximately 1.18 million people have been migrated permanently from Bangladesh to fourteen developed countries[1]. If we critically analyze the socioeconomic status of families of short-term