The purpose of the Bangladesh Environment and Migration Survey (BEMS) was to understand patterns and processes of contemporary internal and international migration in Bangladesh. The project derived from a multi-disciplinary research effort that generated data on the characteristics and behavior of Bangladeshi migrants and non-migrants and the communities in which they lived, and examined whether and how environmental stressors (e.g., salinity, riverbank erosion) affected patterns of migration in this region. This project was coordinated by researchers at Vanderbilt University and it started on 20 January 2014 and ended on 31 May 2014.

Project Description: This project sought to understand how human-environmental interaction affected mobility in Bangladesh, particularly interested in factors which enhance mobility, stability and resilience. The project focused on south west Bangladesh where communities vary in the way that they depend on and interact with their environment. What types of stresses were these and how did they affect the mobility of residents. It is conducted in nine villages of Satkhira, Bagerhat, Jessore, Narial & Khulna districts.

This project had three parts: HH, Community and Migrant parts. For different types different respondent was chosen like for HH survey HH head was selected, community survey community leaders were selected and for migrant survey migrants from the origin HH was selected.

Tasks carried out by Mitra and Associates:

Methodology (sample design & tools): Firstly carried out a community census on all 9 villages to locate the area and all households. Then following the census list randomly 200 households were selected from per village and in sum it is 9*200=1800 households, 2 community interviews from each village means 9*2=18. After the households and community interviewing, 30 migrants were randomly selected from each village that are living either in Khulna or Dhaka district. Here in total 9*30=270 migrant interviews was done.

Questionnaire: There were three types of questionnaires: household, community and migrant and Mitra do translate all the questionnaires, Manuals from English to Bengali along with the modification of questionnaires following the context of coastal areas of Bangladesh.

Training: 4 days training for listing part and18 days training with 3 days field practice in coastal area of Khulna District for HH part & 2 days training for migrant part.

Data collection and quality control: Total 70days were needed to do the data collection of HH and migrant part.QCO, Editors edited the questionnaire at field and made necessary correction and did some cross interview to check the suspicious data.

Data processing: In house data editing and data entry and transcription of recorded information and then english translation of transcription. All data entered twice in cs-pro version and after cross checking and cleaning it handed over to Vanderbilt Authority along with the transcribe data. All data were entered twice and produce miss match report for validity checking and after cleaning and convert it in spss version & send it to the client.

Client Reference: Vanderbilt University, 2201 West End Avenue, Nashville, TN 37235, USA represented by Dr. Katharine Donato, Professor & Chair. Dept. of Sociology, Phone No. 615-322-7500, E-mail: katharine.donato@vanderbilt.edu.