Indian Migrants in Brunei: The Role of Social Networks

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v18i6.1459

Keywords:

Social Networks, Migration, Indian migrants, Brunei, Chain migration

Abstract

Indian immigrants have emerged as a dominant community in Brunei nowadays. Since the colonial period, there has been an influx of Indian migrants to Brunei. This research investigates the social networks that Indians used to get to Brunei. Evidently, there has been little research on these group of people in Brunei. This study employs a sample of 17 low, semi, and unskilled Indian migrants chosen on snow-ball basis. Face-to-face interviews were conducted. According to the findings of this study, social networks played a significant role in making the decision to migrate over to Brunei. We found that chain migration mechanism has been active in the India-Brunei migration domain since long. As a risk diversification approach, migration networks act as a web of interpersonal connections that connect migrants, former migrants, and non-migrants in their origin and destination countries via relationships of kinship, friendship, and common community origin.

Author Biography

AKM Ahsan Ullah, University Brunei Darussalam

Dr AKM Ahsan Ullah is an Associate Professor specialised in Sociology of Migration. He was Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Ullah’s research portfolio includes stints at the Southeast Asian Research Centre (SEARC), Hong Kong; IPH, University of Ottawa, Saint Mary’s University; Canada; the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand. In his home country of Bangladesh, he was the Research Coordinator of Plan International, an international organization focusing on child and rural development in 68 countries around the world. His tasks involved developing research materials for the Dhaka-based BRAC, one of the largest national NGOs in the world with more than 100,000 staff.

Ullah has also conducted and headed several research projects including a rural poverty alleviation program, city dwellers and rural to urban migration programs, and knowledge and awareness sessions for HIV/AIDS of commercial sex workers and their clients. He has also been active in the lives of street children, under the auspices of the Association for Rural Development and Studies (ARDS) in Bangladesh.

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Published

2021-11-30

How to Cite

Binti Haji Nayan, H. M. ., & Ullah, A. A. (2021). Indian Migrants in Brunei: The Role of Social Networks. Migration Letters, 18(6), 697 –. https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v18i6.1459

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 6 (2021)

Section

Articles

License

CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0