Temporary environmental migration and child truancy: An investigation among hard-to-reach families in Bangladesh

Parental temporary migration can be a suitable cope-up policy to mitigate household adversaries due to climatic shocks though its effect on child schooling can be ambiguous. Family hardships such as food insecurity, desperate borrowings, and lack of employment opportunities can happen for an environmental shock, such as a flood, that push parents to migrate temporarily. However, this can also provoke child school absenteeism. Truancy usually leads to poor academic records, promotes early dropouts, and constrains lifetime income. This study focuses on hard-to-reach people who stay unnoticed and neglected in most development projects. The core objective of this research is to examine how their children are getting out of school by environmental shocks. A causal inquiry is tested by a quantitative analysis to link temporary environmental migration of parents from hard-to-reach areas to child school absenteeism and hence child labor. There is a scarcity in the literature relating to these two issues, although they have earned immense attention from researchers separately. Both primary and secondary data are used to test and justify the results. Our result suggests an ambiguous impact of parental temporary migration on child truancy for poor and hard-to-reach families facing a natural calamity such as a flood. There is evidence that parental migration cannot fully secure child truancy. Children from flood-hit families are at risk of getting out of school at least for a short period. Policies are needed to save these children from different hazardous and worst forms of labor and to ensure their schooling.