The "Australian Exodus"
“Everyone is going to Australia.” I hear this from so many people, so often. Colleagues at school, people in town, taxi drivers, officials, everyone knows a lot of people who have left the country. Even we know people who have left the country, or have tried to leave, or are waiting to leave, or are planning to leave.
The law school is not immune to this exodus. In the year after the campus moved to its permanent location in Pangbisa, the staff lost 20 people - out of a total staff of 60. And while much of that can be attributed to the fact that a lot of people didn’t want to commute to Pangbisa from Thimphu, or move to Paro, the astonishing stat was that 14 out of those 20 people left for Australia.
Australia has long been where many Bhutanese have gone for school or to work. Some people also have gone to Canada and the UK, and to a lesser degree, the US. But Australia now has a large Bhutanese community, many there permanently, which draws more people to settle. I recently met a friend of one of our students who had left for Australia with his family 10 years ago after he graduated high school, and he was coming back for a visit for the first time since he left. He observed that the Bhutanese community in Perth, where he lives, has grown dramatically in the time he’s been there, with more people finding better jobs now rather than low-wage work, which had been the typical pattern.
I continually asked why there is such a momentum of Bhutanese leaving the country, and I would get different answers every time. So I thought I’d catalog everything I’ve heard:
1. It is not new for Bhutanese to go to Australia to go to school or to work, but they would come back after earning the money they wanted or getting their degrees. What’s different now is that people are staying. I don’t know if Australia changed its immigration laws, but people tell me that it is not hard to get Permanent Residency, so a lot of people leave with the intention to try for PR after they finish school or work for a few years.
2. There isn’t much of a professional culture in Bhutan to be part of. Someone may have a degree and a profession, but then they are working with people who don’t have the same skill level. So there is a draw to go somewhere to be part of a professional community and work at a higher level than they can here. Many lawyers are frustrated by the underdeveloped legal system, which seems to be the case for criminal defense attorneys we have talked to; between a very punitive legal system and a dysfunctional judiciary, many defense attorneys face a system that never gets close to justice. This is an issue for our students – the grads have often found that the legal profession in areas where they want to work is pretty hollow, so they start looking at other places for a more robust work environment. One student is currently interning at a private law firm in Thimphu that used to have 10 lawyers; there are now 2 remaining. The rest have gone to Australia, or somewhere else “outside”.
3. “The cost of living is too high.” Cost of living has risen here, especially since the pandemic closures, as they have most everywhere else, but I hear from a lot of people that the cost of especially housing has risen dramatically. Our student’s friend who was visiting said he was stunned at how much the cost of things has risen, particularly housing. His friends who still live here talk about how they spend most of their money on rent. His observation was that people here can earn enough to get by, even with good jobs, but there is nothing left to do things that enrich your life in other ways, like travel, or better housing. Or to access services like a lawyer if you need one. Even if he was drawn to return to Bhutan, I suspect that he would not be willing to give up the income that allows him to do more.
4. “There are no jobs.” I hear this from young people, and I also hear that there is a lot of unemployment among high school grads. One of the ways the government is responding to high unemployment among young people is by instituting a mandatory military service year for high school graduates. The idea is that it will employ young folks who may not be working otherwise, while also giving them experience and skills. But it may also impact colleges, like the law school, that recruit those same graduates. As a result, the law school may not be able to have an incoming class next year or the following year, and I imagine all of the colleges in the country will face the same issue. And giving young people skills and training still doesn’t necessarily change the availability of jobs, and whether there may be employment after their year of service.
5. Immigration to Australia was shut down for a while because of Covid closures, and so there is a backlog of visas that are being processed now that Australia has reopened its borders. This makes sense, but I still don’t think it explains why so many people have been waiting for years to get their visa.
6. Young people want more freedom than they can get in Bhutan. Bhutan is actually a pretty restrictive country. We talk about how there has been a metaphorical wall surrounding the country for centuries, and the internet has breached that wall now, so young people get news and outside culture from social media (not that that is the best source but it is where many kids spend time online), instead of from the local insular news media or from the grapevine. Inside Bhutan it is not so easy to know about other foods, music, art, dress, etc. that exist in other cultures and other regions, so when pieces of the outside world leak in, young Bhutanese get a sense of other places and other ways of being that they now want to access. While they still respect and honor their culture and history, they also desire to add to a cultural heritage that is pretty static and doesn’t really welcome outside influences. Everyone in Bhutan wears the same clothes, for example, and while some people may not mind, others would rather be able to dress in other than kiras and ghos.
7. “They just want more money.” Of course, like so many other migration movements, this is a major reason why people have left the country – to earn money to send home so the family can build a new house, or buy amenities that would are too expensive, or just supplement the family’s subsistence living. I've heard about families sending their children abroad to work with the specific intention of sending money back. But it’s too easy to relax into this explanation. I think many older folks who want to maintain the cultural status quo, while resisting change and more openness, want to believe this explanation is all there is instead of examining other reasons people may be leaving.
Even though there is so much out migration, we have also seen an incredible amount of construction going on, certainly in Paro town, the small towns around Paro, Thimphu, even in Pangbisa, as well as other parts of the country we have visited. The house where we lived in Paro still has construction going on next door, which has gotten even larger – an apartment building maybe? I think there is a dramatic shift of people moving from rural areas into larger towns and cities. But it challenges the “everyone is leaving the country” narrative – if everyone is leaving, who is the new construction for? And with all this construction, why does the cost of housing keep going up? Maybe people are moving from the rural areas because there are no jobs, into the towns where there are no jobs, so I suppose that the next step is to leave and go somewhere outside the country where there are jobs. Maybe all that new construction will just be empty. But that could bring the cost of housing down, and maybe encourage more people to stay.
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