Pakistanis abroad: Billions in remittances but at what cost?
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Remittances of Pakistan’s workforce overseas, at roughly $30 billion, equals all its exports. This means a huge amount every year contributes to the social and economic status change for families that have sent their members, often young people, abroad. In many areas, big and fast migration abroad from the country has seen transformative effects on the living standards of such households, motivating others to take the same path and even risking lives. In June last year, a fishing trawler went down off the coast of Greece with 350 Pakistanis attempting to reach Italy. In the previous year, 12 bodies from Pakistan were found on the shore of Turkiye. More recently, on December 15, out of 80 Pakistanis on an illegal migrant boat, only 43 were rescued. Four bodies were recovered, and the rest are feared dead. After every such tragedy, the government of Pakistan promises strict action against the traffickers, but next, we hear of more tragic deaths than any traffickers being behind bars. The reason is that the families, impressed by the fortunes of immigrants, would do anything to send one of their young men abroad. In many such cases, it is not poverty or unemployment, as the would-be emigres pay hefty fees to the trafficker; local social trends and demonstrative effects of big houses and properties of some of the overseas workers serve as motivating factors. They sell properties, take heavy loans or cough up their hard-earned savings to chase dreams of prosperity. Sadly, when government agencies conduct inquiries to nab human traffickers, the families draw cold feet. They would like to take another risk and send another one, rather than turn against what they see as their facilitators.
Illegal exodus appears to be on the rise, but it remains a relatively small part of the large-scale formal migration. One can judge from the fact that during the last decade, 16.5 million Pakistanis left the country. Last year alone, 862,625 went to different destinations worldwide for work, study, and permanent settlement. It was 3.6 percent higher than the 832,339 figure of 2022. This year, the trend is the same and may touch close to one million when the statistics are out.
The Middle East, mainly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), remains the prime destination for Pakistani workers, and among the top 15 destinations mostly for unskilled and semi-skilled. Interestingly, every second Pakistani expat, or about 50 percent of the workforce abroad, is employed in Saudi Arabia today. The number of Pakistanis working in Oman has tripled in recent years to 180, 807.
Out of the two million young people entering the job market every year in Pakistan, most of them are capable only of taking blue-collar jobs in the Middle East.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
Similarly, Bahrain has also witnessed a relative surge after the decline of Pakistanis in Qatar once the FIFA World Cup was over. Comparatively, migration to the UK, Europe and North America is lower, but it comprises mostly highly skilled to skilled young enterprising individuals with the intention of seeking citizenship. Pakistanis are a growing diaspora community in the West with growing political visibility and activism in Britain and the United States; the dream destinations.
However, more than 50 percent of the remittances originate from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Out of the two million young people entering the job market every year in Pakistan, most of them are capable only of taking blue-collar jobs in the Middle East. That may change in the coming years, as one million students out of the three million are enrolled in fields of science, technology, engineering, medicine and mathematics. If the fragile economy continues to be troubled by political instability and mis-governance, it may not be able to absorb fresh graduates, forcing them to look for jobs in the global market. Consequently, the country which is losing the best-qualified talent to the Middle East and the West may suffer an immense brain drain. If Pakistan loses more of the working-age population, even with more remittances, it may lose out on long-term benefits to the economy in terms of technological change, industrialization, and indigenous innovation.
One cannot explain the large-scale migration of Pakistani youth without accounting for the political factors of conflict, insurgencies, corruption, poor rule of law and perpetual structural issues of the elite-rent-seeking economy. Luckily, the growth of Pakistan’s working-age population and some other South Asian countries coincides with the serious decline of such a band of population in the West. They may need more doctors and nurses to take care of aging populations, and more robust hands-on factories and grow food in the coming decades, and Pakistan would be one of the sources if it fully prepares its manpower for that purpose. Perhaps that is the logic of shifting demographics in the world and globalizing economies, but dividends in foreign currency may not compensate for the probable loss of national productivity.
We may see Pakistan as one of the largest consumer markets, seventh in the world by 2030, wasting remittances, but not a big exporter of high-value goods and services.
– Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
X: @RasulRais
