Nepal is now one of the leading exporters of migrant labor, supplying young men and women to the oil-rich Gulf nations and as far as Malaysia and South Korea, where they sign up for multi-year contracts to work for employers. While this has become one of the major sources of national revenue — remittances account for a quarter of the country’s GDP — it has also brought tremendous pain, with stories of death and abuse often leading to tragedy. The stories of success are often overshadowed by the grim visuals of coffins that are flown in from Malaysia and Qatar almost on a daily basis. Why is a significant segment of any country hell bent on going abroad to work despite risks? How do they get themselves in a trap before they even set foot on the plane? And why have the migrant laborers just become numbers with little done to change their fate? Anup Kaphle is the deputy foreign editor at ​BuzzFeed. ​Previously he served as the digital foreign editor at The Washington Post. He has reported from Afghanistan and Nepal, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and the CBC among others. His reporting on labor migration from Nepal is supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Part of the Center for Internatioanal Studies World Beyond the Headlines series: cis.uchicago.edu/wbh Originally scheduled as part of the 2014-2015 speaker series on Global (In)Equalities: cis.uchicago.edu/inequality

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