No dreams, no gain: aspiration failure, poverty traps and the tea workers’ children in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on the underlying causes of aspirations failure among young children of Bangladesh’s tea workers and how this aspirations failure hinders their future career plans and entraps them in poverty. Drawing on Appadurai’s theorisation of the capacity to aspire, Ray’s aspiration window and aspiration gap and Boudreau’s distinction and habitus, we investigated and explained the root causes of aspirations failure of tea workers’ children and its resultant effects on their life. We conducted a qualitative case study of two tea gardens located in greater Sylhet Division in Bangladesh to explore the lived experiences of the research participants employing a triangulation of methods for data collection including in-depth interviews, case studies, and direct observation. The study finds that aspiration failure among tea workers’ children is rooted in the structural constraints and other concomitant factors also created due to these constraints, which forces them into poverty traps.

KEYWORDS:

• Poverty
• aspiration failure
• tea workers’ children
• Bangladesh

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and helpful comments and suggestions on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by SUST Research Center, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh [Grant Number: SS/2022/1/54].

Notes on contributors

Md Al-Amin

Md Al-Amin is Professor of Sociology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh. He received PhD at the University of Milan, Italy. He authored a number of articles which were published in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Children’s Geographies, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, The Hong Kong Journal of Social Work, Asian Affairs, Multidisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Labor History, Development in Practice, and International Journal of Environmental Studies. His research interests include gender and development, NGOs interventions of microcredit, neoliberalism, labour studies and development.

Md Nazrul Islam

Md Nazrul Islam is Professor of Political Studies at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh. He received PhD in Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His works appeared in various international peer-reviewed journals including Children’s Geographies, International Area Studies Review, Bandung: Journal of the Global South, Religions, Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, Social Sciences, Politics, Religion & Ideology, Labor History, Development in Practice, and International Journal of Environmental Studies. He recently published a book (co-authored) entitled Islam and Democracy in South Asia: The Case of Bangladesh (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Dr. Islam’s research interests include religion, politics and governance; democracy and human rights; religion, environment and development; poor and marginalised communities, and Bangladesh studies.