For many migrants, no land is sweeter than home

by RAFIQUL ISLAM SARKER

Golam Sarwar Habib left Bangladesh for Belgium in 1991 after graduating from university when he was 27. He now owns this shopping mall in the Jahaj Company area of Rangpur, among other investments. PHOTO/Rafiqul Islam Sarker/IPS

Most migrants to Europe, Australia and the United States from Rangpur in northern Bangladesh leave home at a young age and return when they have just passed middle age.

Intensely connected and immersed in family bonds and Bangladeshi cultural values, they tend to return to their birthplace despite obtaining citizenship from a second country. For them, going to these far flung places is about working hard to save money. And in the end, they want to come back home.

Many are now well off and have enough funds to invest in business ventures in Rangpur and in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. This IPS correspondent recently met two such returnees – Rakibuzzaman and Golam Sarwar Habib.

Both had migrated to Belgium in their youth and have now returned to Bangladesh in their middle age. Both of them enjoy dual citizenship of Bangladesh and Belgium.

The stories of Rakibuzzaman and Habib tell us that wherever migrants go, they are looking for better incomes mainly to look after their families back home. Many return with newly acquired skills and invest in the economies of their home countries. Their contributions to host and home countries are immense and help economies on both sides.

Rakibuzzaman, 54, of Senpara area in Rangpur city, 300 km north of the capital, now runs a large restaurant and a readymade garments shop in Dhap area of the city. Rakibuzzaman spoke to IPS about how he passed his days in anguish and agony in Belgium without his parents and relatives who he left behind in Bangladesh for more than twenty years.

The third of six siblings, Rakib was brought up in an extended family. His father was an inspector in the Bangladesh police force. He completed a Secondary School Certificate (equivalent to O levels) from Rangpur Zila School in 1982. From early childhood, he dreamt about going to a European country with a view to earning money.

“To go to a European country was not as difficult in the 1990s as it is nowadays,” Rakib told IPS.

He left Bangladesh for Germany in 1986 with a visit visa and stayed there for one year. Then in 1987, he moved to Belgium and worked at a chemical factory in Ghent, a port city in the northwest, for almost four years.

“I found business to be more profitable than the job in Ghent and therefore opened up a shop in the city and ran the business profitably for about 17 years,” said Rakib.

“There was hardly a day in Belgium that passed without recalling my sweet memories in Bangladesh,” he said, adding, “We had no telephone connection with my home in Bangladesh and communication with my relatives in Bangladesh from Belgium was very expensive. I could talk to my mother over the phone only once a week.”

Rakib’s mother eagerly waited for him to call at the house of a neighbor every weekend.

“I felt the absence of my parents and relatives badly during my stay in Belgium,” Rakib said, adding that he was always anxious to get some news on Bangladesh every day but Bangladeshi newspapers were not available in Belgium.

The Belgian government confirmed his citizenship after four years of living there. After getting his passport, he traveled to Bangladesh to meet his parents and relatives.

“I can’t explain how I felt on the day I arrived in Bangladesh from Belgium in 1996. On arrival at Saidpur airport, I wished I could kiss its soil,” said Rakib.

Inter Press Service for more

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