The idea is that housing those factories ultimately will provide Bangladesh with the opportunity to lift their overall standard of living up, whether they manage to take advantage of it, remains to be seen....but it has been done before.....in South Korea, for example...which before the division, was considered to be the poorer part of the country.
The husband worked for a maquiladora and wasn't home when we visited. They had two toddlers and were in their twenties. The wife welcomed us in.
They lived in a stone-built 15’ x 6’ oval with a thatched roof. It was one room and they slept hammocks hung from the walls. During the day the hammocks were put up. The floor was dirt. The back door opened onto a small yard with a couple of chickens walking around. The husband had suspended a tarp from the house into the yard and extended their living area. Under the tarp was a jerry-rigged stove pipe leading to a little barbeque-type stove.
They were really poor. My friend's beaming and asks the wife about their life here. The woman replies that it is miserable, but then the maquiladora came. Now her husband has work, before he had none and they were at the mercy of either the local church or government.
She then showed off her newly electrified home with a real outlet. They had a little tv and she was thrilled with the tarp, chickens and barbecue. She didn't have chickens before and they provided eggs and meat. The tarp area was a dream come true for her. She used to have to cook inside the house and it would be hot and smokey. At night, it was so hard to sleep. Now, she can cook outside and there isn't any smoke.
She loved the maquiladora and thanked God for it. My friend, her deeply held notions of US capitalistic imperialism dashed by an honest Mayan housewife, didn't talk the whole drive back. True story.