Kathmandu, March 14

A research on migration, whose findings were shared with various stakeholders in Kathmandu today, pointed out that some of the challenges facing migrants could be addressed only through better governance.

The research was carried out by Kathmandu University, Nepal; North Eastern Hill University, India; Aarhus University and University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Uddhab Pyakurel, teacher at KU, said the objective of the programme was to understand the implications of the research.

The findings compiled by Jytte Agergaard and Jens Seeberg also pointed out that Nepali people, who migrate without obtaining migration certificate, are not guaranteed access to the basic benefits of society.

Despite the legal framework to deal with challenges of foreign migration, migrant workers, particularly those in lower wage industries, often encounter exploitative behaviour in every step of recruitment and migration process in Nepal as well as abroad, said the findings.

Most of the participants spoke about the remarkable contribution of remittance and the need for government efforts to protect migrants’ interests in the destination countries.

Some others also underscored the negative side of migration, saying it was causing disintegration of families, increased tension in the families and adverse impacts on the culture of local communities.

The research project consists of seven sub-studies that focuses on different types and aspects of migration such as transitional politics and rural governance in Nepal; military migration and its social and political implications on Nepal; migration among religious and ethnic minorities, returns of educational migration; mobility, multi-locality and civil engagement in far-eastern Nepal; Nepali migrants in the coal-mines of northeastern India; migration to Gulf countries and the system of migration governance in Nepal.

The research deals with the impact of mobile population on citizenship certificate, rights, civic engagement, democratic processes and stabilising governance practices in Nepal.

A coherent analytical framework that emphasises the dynamic relationship between sending and receiving migrant communities allows the seven sub-studies to address distinct types of migration (labour migration, forced migration, educational migration, military migration and religious migration), four of them taking their empirical point of departure in sending locations, two in receiving locations.

The research also attempts to highlight the relationship between categories of mobile population and democracy-building from a double-sided perspective  how can migrants influence current constitutional and political processes? And, how are different groups of migrants addressed and involved in political discussions ?