Title page
Contents
Acknowledgements 4
Foreword 7
Executive summary 8
1. Introduction 10
2. Methodology and data 13
3. An overview of overseas migration from Bangladesh 15
4. Experiences with women's migration from Bangladesh: Learning from literature 19
5. National acts and policies related to labour migration in Bangladesh 24
5.1. Overseas Employment and Migrants Act, 2013 25
5.2. Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act, 2012 25
5.3. Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Policy, 2016 25
6. Analysis of media reports portraying women's migration 26
6.1. Basic characteristics of media (print and television) reporting 27
6.2. The focus of newspaper reports 32
6.3. Focus of news reports on TV 32
6.4. Language used to describe abuse 32
6.5. Main features of the media portrayal of female migrants 35
7. The thought process behind print and TV media's focus on migration-related topics or editorial lines 37
8. Discussion and way forward 40
Appendix 1. Gender disaggregated data on overseas migration from Bangladesh 43
Appendix 2. Criteria to analyse media reports 44
References 45
Table 1. Migration from Bangladesh and women's share in total migration since the signing of the bilateral agreement with Saudi Arabia 16
Table 2. Share of different destination countries in total migration 17
Table 3. Share of destination countries for women migrants, 2019 18
Table 4. Number of news items by year 27
Table 5. Number and share of different types of news among migration-related (published between 2015 to February 2021 but excluding COVID-19-related news) 27
Table 6. Types and share of different types of TV news (aired between 2015 and 2021) 28
Table 7. Gender disaggregation of migration-related print news 28
Table 8. Gender disaggregated intensity of negative news items in total news 29
Table 9. Print news according to destination country 29
Table 10. Place of migration-related news in the newspapers 30
Table 11. Position of the news in the newspaper 30
Table 12. Size of the news in the newspaper 30
Table 13. Topics covered by positive news reports 31
Table 14. Types of complaints reported in newspapers 31
Table 15. Keywords used in newspaper reports to describe the suffering of migrants (different years) 34
Figure 1. Trends in overseas migration from Bangladesh (2000-2021) 16
Figure 2. Trends in gender-disaggregated migration from Bangladesh (2014-2021) 17
Boxes
Box 1. Highlights of news stories aired on TV channels on migration issues 33
Box 2. Comments from migrants included in TV reports 33
Box 3. Keywords in comments broadcast on different TV news/talk shows 34