How Does the ‘Culture of Gift’ Disrupt the Social System in Migration-Prone Regions of Bangladesh?

Kazi Shek Farid, Bangladesh Agricultural University
Mohammad Jasim Uddin, 2Department of Sociology, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet

While overseas migration brings socio-economic benefits to communities, it has significant detrimental social implications. One of such implications is the culture of gift exchange, which disrupts the social system in some instances, though it is supposed to strengthen social bonds. Based on Marcel Mauss and his successors’ anthropological and philosophical studies on gift as a theoretical foundation, we explore how the culture of gift exchange by migrant households leads to social disruption in predominant migrant-sending regions of Bangladesh. Data for this qualitative study were generated by employing in-depth interviews with the left-behind wives of the overseas migrants, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews with numerous stakeholders in purposefully selected country’s most migration-prone Cumilla district. Reflective thematic analysis confirms that the expectation of expensive gifts from migrant households becomes a culture, which exacerbates economic disparities and intensifies social disharmony among the community members. We also examine how the culture of gift exchange creates challenges for some non-migrant and even low-earning migrant households who do not have adequate income to keep pace with the high-earning migrant households. Productive remittance use policies and awareness build-up programs for migrant households are crucial to mitigate the adverse impacts of gift culture.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, International Migration, Population and Development, Qualitative data/methods/approaches

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