She went abroad for a living. She found her future at home

The grocery shop is small and its inventory modest. Packets of biscuits and snacks, soap, spices, rice and other everyday necessities arranged within easy reach. From behind the counter, Luksana Begum keeps track of customers, money coming in and goods that will need replacing.

It is an ordinary village business, which is precisely what makes it significant.

The shop earns her about 10,000 taka in profit in a typical month. It helps support her mother. She decides what to buy, what to sell and how much of her earnings to put back into the business.

Not long ago, Luksana had almost none of those choices.

In October 2024, she left this part of Sylhet for Saudi Arabia to work as a domestic helper. She borrowed money for the journey and expected to return with savings. Fifteen days later, she was back in Bangladesh. She says she had been moved between employers, denied sufficient food and rest, verbally abused and paid nothing.

Getting home cost her another 40,000 taka.

Her brief migration is an unusually compressed version of a much larger story playing out across Bangladesh…women pushed abroad by poverty and limited opportunities, exposed to abuse in jobs hidden inside private homes, and then confronted by debt and stigma when they return.

The risks have become sufficiently familiar that Bangladeshi women appear increasingly reluctant to migrate for work. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, women accounted for roughly 10% of Bangladesh's migrant workforce. That proportion later fell to about 5%. 

In 2024, 61,158 women left the country for jobs abroad, down nearly 20% from the previous year, according to data from the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training. Excluding the pandemic years, women's participation in overseas employment fell to its lowest level in a decade.

Saudi Arabia sits at the centre of that migration system. Since 2004, more than 524,000 Bangladeshi women have travelled there for work, overwhelmingly into domestic service. Bangladesh signed an agreement with the kingdom in 2015 after Indonesia and the Philippines restricted the deployment of domestic workers amid reports of abuse.

As Bangladeshi recruitment expanded, so did accounts of unpaid salaries, excessive workloads and physical and psychological mistreatment.

Luksana however knew little of that history when she decided to leave.

An unlikely journey 

She was born on December 25, 1988, in Noasudpur village in Bishwanath Upazila. Her family's troubles began early. When she was 12, she said, her father married another woman and left the household.

Her mother became the family's provider, working as a domestic helper in several homes. There were two daughters to feed and shelter, and little money left for anything else.

Luksana liked school. But after Class 7, the cost became too much. She dropped out.

Marriage seemed to offer another route toward stability. In her late teens, she married a daily labourer. A year later, her husband died.

She returned to her mother's house, now a young widow with little education, no reliable income and few obvious ways to change either.

For women in circumstances like hers, overseas employment can appear to offer an escape from precisely those constraints. Poverty, unemployment, limited education and social insecurity remain important forces pushing Bangladeshi women toward migration. 

Yet many travel into low-skilled jobs where their bargaining power is slight and their ability to seek help can be constrained by language barriers, restrictions on movement and dependence on employers.

For Luksana, Saudi Arabia gradually emerged as the answer.

She was frightened by the idea of going abroad and uncertain about what awaited her. Eventually, she approached a local broker. The journey would cost 50,000 taka, a considerable amount for her family. She assembled it through loans and contributions from relatives.

On October 28, 2024, she left home. The route was straightforward on paper: Sylhet to Dhaka, then a flight to Saudi Arabia.

What happened after she arrived was not.

Luksana said she was placed in one household and then another, expected to work for long stretches without adequate rest. Food was insufficient. Verbal abuse was routine. Instead of having a stable employer and collecting the salary she had travelled thousands of kilometres to earn, she found herself repeatedly moved.

She called the broker who had arranged her migration. His response, she recalled, was essentially an instruction to stop crying and work.

For domestic workers, the isolation of the workplace can itself become a source of vulnerability. Unlike workers in factories or shops, they often labour beyond public view, inside employers' homes. When communication and movement are restricted, even contacting someone outside can become difficult. Bangladeshi returnees have repeatedly described excessive workloads, unpaid wages, poor conditions and abuse.

Luksana lasted 15 days.

She had received none of the wages she expected. But leaving was not free. She said she had to find another 40,000 taka to pay for the flight home.

On November 11, she landed in Bangladesh.

She had travelled to Saudi Arabia in debt hoping to earn money. She returned having earned nothing and owing more.

Hapless female migrants 

There is no comprehensive government count of Bangladeshi women who come home under such circumstances. Authorities generally record returnees travelling on an "outpass" after losing their passports, leaving a significant gap in understanding the scale of failed migration. 

Airport officials and migrant-rights organisations have cited unpaid wages, abuse, excessive workloads, health problems and unmet expectations among the reasons women return.

Other research offers a glimpse of what happens next. A 2023 study by the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association found that 37.3% of female migrants surveyed had returned empty-handed. A BRAC report found 67,199 women among migrant workers returning over a six-year period after suffering sexual or physical abuse. Returnees can also arrive with injuries, psychological distress and debts accumulated to finance migration in the first place.

For Luksana, returning to Noasudpur did not mean returning to the life she had left. Her mother took her back. The village was less forgiving.

Luksana said rumours began circulating about her. Living with her mother without a husband, she found that some people treated her vulnerability almost as an invitation. Men made inappropriate propositions. Neighbours whispered.

It was a different kind of confinement from the one she had escaped abroad.

The stigma attached to failed migration can be particularly punishing for women. Male migrants who return without savings may face financial disappointment; women can confront questions about what happened to them abroad, insinuations about sexual abuse and judgments about their character. That social isolation can compound the trauma and financial insecurity with which some women return.

Luksana needed an income, but she also needed a way to regain control of her life.

A neighbour eventually told her about BRAC's Migration Programme. She went to its Migration and Reintegration Support Centre in Sylhet, where she was enrolled for assistance.

The intervention was relatively simple. She attended a four-day course in entrepreneurship development and financial literacy, along with basic and career counselling. She learned how to maintain accounts, deal with customers, calculate expenses, save part of her earnings and reinvest money in a business.

The counselling addressed something less easily measured.

For months, much of Luksana's life had been determined by other people: a father who left, poverty that ended her education, the death of her husband, a broker who arranged her migration, employers who controlled her working conditions and neighbours who judged her after she returned.

The sessions, she said, helped restore some confidence. BRAC then provided grocery products to help her establish the small shop.

A changed life 

There was no dramatic transformation. The business grew in the way small village shops usually do... a few products, customers returning, money carefully recycled into new stock. Luksana learned to negotiate with suppliers and customers. She began keeping track of what sold and what did not.

Gradually, the woman who had returned from Saudi Arabia without a salary began making her own income.

Today, she says the shop produces about 10,000 taka in monthly profit. Some of it goes toward supporting her mother. Some go back into the business. She hopes eventually to expand it.

Her experience points to a problem Bangladesh's migration system has often treated as an afterthought. The decline in female migration suggests that many Bangladeshi women and their families may already be making their own assessment of those risks. 

More than 100,000 women a year migrated abroad between 2015 and 2019. The figure recovered to 105,466 in 2022 after the pandemic disruption, then dropped to 76,108 in 2023 and 61,158 in 2024. Saudi Arabia remains the leading destination.

Migration specialists have argued that the response cannot simply be to send more women abroad. Shariful Islam Hasan, an associate director at BRAC, has called for stronger monitoring of working conditions in Middle Eastern countries and greater emphasis on skilled migration that can produce higher earnings in safer jobs. 

Sumaiya Islam, executive director of the Bangladesh Nari Sramik Kendra, has pointed to inadequate social-support systems for female migrants both abroad and at home.

Luksana's story did not end with the shop.

Recently, the government selected her for the Sylhet district's Indomitable Woman Award, in a category recognising women who overcame abuse and severe adversity. She represented Bishwanath Upazila.

The recognition carries a certain irony. Luksana once left Bishwanath because she could see little economic future there. Her attempt to earn a living thousands of kilometres away lasted barely two weeks. The livelihood she had gone searching for in Saudi Arabia eventually took shape close to where her journey began.

Now, on ordinary days, she stands behind her counter and sells groceries.

There are bills to calculate, shelves to replenish and customers to serve. Ten thousand taka a month is hardly wealth. The shop has not erased the debts, bereavement or humiliation that preceded it.

But the money is hers to earn and hers to manage. And when the shop closes, she does not need a broker's permission to come home.

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