“I had just finished high school in Bangladesh, so when I started work here I didn’t know anything about construction. I watched how my colleagues worked, and slowly I started getting myself into it and I learned all these skills. The building wasn’t that complete then, it was only 10 stories tall. Now it’s something like 30 stories. All the glass that you can see here, it’s all fitted by us. I installed those at the top floors myself. I really like to see this building. It’s a beautiful apartment.”

“When Malaysians look at this building, they will think the company did it. Not many people know that we made these buildings, and that is not their fault, we just can’t make them understand that we did it.

“TikTok is very popular, especially in Bangladesh. I started doing it for fun but now I have many friends in TikTok. I have almost 80 thousand likes and have uploaded over 600 videos. I created a TikTok group for Bangladeshis in Malaysia. There are over 50 members in that group and this is our first hangout session. I started this because I wanted to make the videos back for people in Bangladesh. So they can see that even those of us that are working abroad are still united and remember Bangladesh”

This six-part video series and photo essays were produced under a collaboration between R.AGE and the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Migrant Workers’ Empowerment and Advocacy (MWEA) Project. The MWEA Project is funded by the United States Department of Labor under cooperative agreement number IL-28099-15-75-K-11.
This material does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Department of Labor, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the United States Government. 100% percentage of the total costs of this project or program is financed with Federal funds, for a total of 26,322.61 dollars.