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AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented societal disruption and disproportionately affected global mobility dynamics. Within such a troubled and intensifying crisis, the intersection of migration and gender is even more unsettling. Since the pandemic outbreak, Bangladesh witnessed a colossal crisis among millions of Bangladeshi migrants working overseas—a considerable section of them are women. By highlighting the plight of the Bangladeshi women migrants in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, this study expands the emerging literature that addresses the nexus among migration, pandemic fallout and gendered labour. Redrawing our understanding of globalization from below, the study attempts to further advance the theoretical perspectives on the predicaments of globalization and gendered precarity in contract labour migration. The study argues that the focus on the power asymmetry between the host and sending countries remains too limited to provide a comprehensive understanding of how inequalities are reproduced and transformed. Instead, it suggests that the challenges and disadvantages women migrants endure are embedded in the asymmetries of deep‐rooted economic and social structures in tandem with the systemic practice of otherness and exclusion.

Thousands of ready-made garment (RMG) workers, frequently seen as Bangladesh's lifeline for economic growth and poverty alleviation, were sacked arbitrarily just weeks after the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. The widespread cancellation of existing orders, followed by factory closures and worker layoffs, triggered an unprecedented crisis for RMG workers, the vast majority of whom are women. As the industry is slowly recovering from the initial upheaval and on its way to rebound, this article revisits the impacts of the pandemic on the RMG workers in Bangladesh, who predominantly hails from impoverished rural regions of the country. Using first-hand data and secondary literature, this article offers a compelling account of the pandemic outbreak's disproportionate impact on female RMG workers. As we examine the effects on workers, we also look back at the structural hierarchies and power asymmetries embedded in this sector—a quintessential feature of the contemporary global economy. The article offers three distinct contributions to the emerging literature on the Covid-19 pandemic and its impacts on the changing labor spectrum in the global South. First, it explores the pandemic's broader gendered implications, revealing how it unevenly affected women. Second, it underlines how the pre-existing power dynamic within the global supply chain further exacerbated inequality, marginalization, and workers' precarity in Bangladesh's RMG industry. Lastly, it underscores the unequal interdependence between "core" and "peripheral" countries in the global production and labor landscape, highlighting the asymmetrical nature of their relationship.

This article examines the emerging political and social mobilisation of Rohingya women activists in connection with the forced displacement of nearly a million Rohingya from the Rakhine state of Myanmar in August 2017. In exile, a promising number of Rohingya women have become actively engaged in social and political domains that have been historically male-dominated. The findings reveal how the internationalisation and the considerable global attention to the Rohingya refugee crisis have provided the space to navigate traditional gender roles and created an opportunity for Rohingya women to become important civic actors in this relatively nascent diaspora. Varying levels of education, age, technical and linguistic skills, along with diverse opportunities offered by the host countries, impact the (in)ability of Rohingya refugee women to play their part in diaspora activism.

AbstractBangladesh sets an admirable example of solidarity with the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar by hosting more than a million Rohingyas despite its resource constraints. However, there is a perceptible shift from this rather unconditional solidarity to an anti-refugee sentiment. In evaluating the factors that contributed to these changing dynamics, we analysed how the host communities' solidarity with the plight of Rohingya refugees evolved. Broadly, it identifies three key factors that influence the approaches of the locals towards the refugees: economic instability as a result of the wage fall and price hike, unequal access to humanitarian aid and uneven distribution of resource opportunities created through substantial humanitarian operations and finally, political uncertainty about the future of the Rohingya crisis. By bringing the experiences of host communities and the manifold implications of existing humanitarian interventions into the centre of the analysis, the paper underlines the need for a more conciliatory approach involving different actors engaged in this crisis. In so doing, we argue that addressing the adverse impacts of a refugee crisis on the poorer hosts, particularly within the context of a protracted refugee situation, needs a more systematic evaluation, and it cannot be dealt with isolation from the broader socio-economic context of the refugee-hosting regions.

The protection of migrant workers has received renewed attention in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article depicts how unpreparedness, inadequate social security and support services, and pre-existing socio-economic disparities disproportionately impacted Bangladeshi migrant workers during the pandemic. Adopting a qualitative approach based on findings from existing literature and surveys and primary data collected through interviews with returnee Bangladeshi migrants from the Gulf States, the article argues that the dearth of institutional, legal, social, and political understanding of the needs of migrants remains the main impediment to a comprehensive social protection system. The findings call for designing a crisis response and recovery policy, preparing a returnee database and leveraging bilateral, regional, and global processes to ensure migrants' uninterrupted protection at home and abroad. The article also underscores the importance of a nuanced understanding and practice of gendered social support, and above all, adopting a rights-based approach to labor migration.