SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Presentation and commentary of Rita Afsar´s paper, by Jan Magnusson, Lund University

Dr Rita Afsar is a sociologist who works at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies in Dhaka although she is presently in Australia. She is focusing her research on Bangladeshi migrant labor. This is also the perspective of her paper, which is called Globalization, International Migration and the Need for Networking: The Bangladesh perspective.

I will try to make a brief summary of her paper and end with some personal reflections.

1. Rita begins her paper by describing a situation where only a small fraction of the population of Bangladesh has access to IT facilities. The situation is particularly grim for Bangladesh's migrant labor in spite of their large contribution to its country's economy. Rita argues that free access to information and simple IT facilities can save the migrant labor force from a lot of the harassment, exploitation and loss of money that they are presently suffering. It is within this context her paper approaches SASNET.

2. More than 75 percent of the migrant labor works in the Middle East where it, according to Rita's research, is heavily exploited, discriminated against and even abused. There is an International Convention of the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers signed by 117 states, but in reality many of these states have failed to implement it in practice.

3. Enforcement of the convention depends on international cooperation, coordination and advocacy, Rita argues, and it could be efficiently promoted by a network like SASNET through advocacy activities, raising awareness, and providing the migrant workers with access to basic IT facilities.

4. Rita describes how this can be organized on different levels, for instance through a bilateral agreement between Bangladesh and Sweden to promote Swedish investment in the IT and telecom sector in Bangladesh, and how the technology can be used to monitor human rights abuse of the Bangladeshi migrant labor. Access to IT can also help the migrant workers when they prepares for their venture at home. Rita suggests that IT facilities should be installed at so called Thana level post offices (a level between village and district).I find Rita's ideas for SASNET quite instrumental and she speaks about networking within SASNET in terms that are rather similar to conventional bilateral development projects on the level of structural adjustments. But I think Rita might better address the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) rather than SASNET on this matter. Still, I think there is a point to be made here about the relationship between SASNET and SIDA. It is not really clear and needs to be sorted out, especially in the long run.

But leaving her specific project proposal aside for a minute, I believe that SASNET can function as a broker between academic research, government agencies, and private enterprise to the effect that Rita wants. But this network process is more likely to be a bottom-up, de-centered rather than top-down and state managed activity. A dynamic research collaboration much along the lines Mats Benner just spoke about.

Rita's paper is also discussing matters in bilateral terms between Bangladesh and Sweden only and she does not mention how the other South Asian countries come into this process. But even if we took that into consideration it is still not enough. In my view, we need to go further, leave the concepts of modernity behind, and recognize that a network like SASNET, under the conditions of globality, really is more than a Sweden-South Asia relationship and is in reality (which your presence here proves) a transnational interpersonal network involving people, ideas and institutions from all over the world. Like Björn Hettne will talk about later, I believe that even though we focus on a region we are working in a globali context. SASNET is a lot about creating a sense of community among Swedish South Asia researchers and teachers, and their personal networks in South Asia and elsewhere.

Another aspect of this perspective is that the nation state and its institutions are becoming less relevant and without a conventional power center most of the network is actually beyond the control of any state (and any other actor as well, for that matter). This is perhaps what increasingly makes SASNET an anachronism. It was born within the political framework of the Swedish nation state but aspires to become something that escapes such a power hierarchy and view of the world. Maybe this tension is at the core of the SASNET venture and an issue that deserves to be addressed during this conference?

And I apologize to Rita for abusing her paper to deliver my globalist program. Thank you.

Jan Magnusson