Jordan

This paper tackles the question of irregular migration in Jordan through its four main aspects. The first concerns irregular labour migrants and has been approached by using figures showing the socio-economic profile of non Jordanians working in Jordan and, additionally, unemployment in Jordan. This is done by assuming close similarities between legal and irregular labour migrants. The second is an attempt to estimate the stocks and describe the characteristics of irregular migrants in Jordan through data collected from arrival and departure statistics. The author focused on the nationalities of persons involved from 1995 to 2007. The third part of the paper is dedicated to refugees in Jordan. Two main groups have been singled out: the Palestinians (from 1948) as an older refugee group and the refugees from Iraq (from 1990) as a more recent one. Their numbers, geographic distribution and main demographic and other characteristics have been described. In the fourth part, the paper brings out some aspects related to transit migration before closing with conclusions and recommendations. Although the paper points to the unavailability of reliable data on irregular migration in Jordan, it makes use of a whole range of indirect estimations, all available from the Department of Statistics (DOS) and the Ministry of Labour (MOL) and from arrival and departure statistics and associated surveys. The 2004 population census data gives an idea about the non-Jordanians in Jordan broken down according to nationality and reason and duration of stay in Jordan. The MOL data provides statistics about non-Jordanians holding work permits broken down by nationality, educational levels, occupational levels, marital status, place of residence and monthly earnings. For refugees, data was extracted from UNRWA statistics and Fafo survey (2007) on Iraqis in Jordan.

Jordan has traditionally been one of the regions most welcoming countries toward Iraqis. The country received several flows of Iraqis during the last four decades, but most of Iraqis residing in Jordan fled the precarious situation prevailing in Iraq following the U.S. –led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Jordan is not a party to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refuges or the 1967 Protocol on Refugees, but Jordan cooperates with the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the implementation of a Memorandum of understanding signed between the two parties in 1998. The provisions of this Memorandum are in many aspects, similar to those of the 1951 Convention. The focus of this study is the legal aspects of the Iraqis residing in Jordan; and due to the scarcity of legal writing on the subject, it relies mainly on the legal texts, whether nationals or internationals, and to the Jordanian government positions and measures pertaining to this subject. The study has eight sections, they are as follows: Entry of foreigners to the country, numbers of Iraqis in Jordan, entry restrictions, Non-Iraqi refugees, mainly Palestinians arriving from Iraq, the right of asylum in Jordan, temporary Protection Regime, expulsion and "refoulement" of Iraqi refugees, and living conditions of Iraqis in Jordan.

This research report describes the main features and social profile of the Iraqi community in Jordan, the various policies Jordan has formulated for them, and the evolution in popular debates targeting Iraqis. Policies and debates are analysed in the light of the socio-political challenges posed by the Iraqi presence in Jordan. Furthermore, socio-political challenges and opportunities which might be generated, either by the departure, or alternatively by the enduring presence of the post-2003 Iraqi "refugees" in Jordan are tackled.

A striking evidence is the high figures of undocumented migrants in Jordan. The questions asked in the present report are the following: do these figures signal a failure of policies? What are actually the aims of policies directed at illegal migrants in Jordan? And, ultimately, are unauthorized migrants really unwanted, and why?

This study explores the legal aspects of high-skilled migration to and from Jordan, but it must be remembered that it is difficult to deal with this subject without taking international migration more generally into account. The study is structured in four sections: Jordanian migrant workers in the GCC countries and migrant workers in Jordan – numbers, qualifications and remittances; legal framework pertaining to border-controls in Jordan and the GCC countries; the human rights of migrant workers in Jordan and the GCC countries; and finally the bilateral workforce cooperation agreements between Jordan and Arab receiving countries. Cette étude explore les aspects juridiques de la migration hautement qualifiée de et vers la Jordanie. Il s’agit néanmoins de garder en mémoire qu’il est difficile d’aborder un tel sujet sans tenir compte des migrations internationales dans leur ensemble. L’étude est structurée en quatre parties : les travailleurs jordaniens migrants dans les pays du Conseil de Coopération du Golfe et les travailleurs migrants en Jordanie – effectifs, qualifications et transferts financiers ; le cadre juridique relatif au contrôle des frontières en Jordanie et dans les pays du Golfe ; les droits humains des travailleurs migrants en Jordanie et dans les pays du Golfe ; et enfin, les accords bilatéraux de coopération en matière de main d’œuvre entre la Jordanie et les pays arabes de destination.

Abstract This study explores Jordan’s policies in regards to international migration in general and to migrant women in particular. It has four sections: women’s participation in the workforce in Jordan; the national and international framework for migration to Jordan; the question of transferability of Jordanian citizenship from a Jordanian woman, married to a non–citizen, to her children; and women immigrating to Jordan. Résumé Cette étude explore les politiques jordaniennes en matière de migration internationale en général, et concernant les femmes migrantes en particulier. Elle est structurée en quatre sections: la part des femmes dans la main d’œuvre en Jordanie; le cadre national et international de la migration internationale en Jordanie; la question de la transmission de la citoyenneté jordanienne; et enfin les femmes qui immigrent en Jordanie.

The focus of this study is the legal framework on irregular migration, in Jordan, which is at once a destination country, a country of origin and a country of transit for irregular migrants. This complex and controversial issue poses real concerns for Jordan, but has not yet been addressed effectively or efficiently either by Jordanian policy or in academic literature. Consequently, this study relies principally on the few legal texts pertaining to the topic, on the Ministry of Labor and on the Ministry of the Interior’s positions, and on information found in the Jordanian media. The study has four main sections: the first deals with Jordanian national law and the question of when a person is considered an irregular migrant; while the other three sections explore the way that the Jordanian public authorities deal with irregularity in practice. Finally, in the conclusion, we suggest ways in which the legal standing of irregular migrants in Jordan could be improved.

Refugees from Palestine are one of the oldest refugee populations in the world. And UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which anchors Palestinian refugees’ claims for their right of return to Palestine, is now 63 years old. Yet, in Jordan and Lebanon, the refugees’ main host countries, the Palestinian presence grew in importance in domestic politics through the 2000s. In Lebanon there were the political debates surrounding the granting of some civil rights to Palestinian refugees, which culminated mid-2010. In Jordan, controversies over political naturalisation stir up violent political debates. This essay explores the reasons behind the fact that, in Jordan and Lebanon, granting civil rights to refugees raises a lot of concern. It also examines how the civil rights issue cannot be separated from that of the protection of the Palestinian “cause”, the right of return. More generally, the report investigates the various perceived challenges and the outreach of Palestinian refugees’ settlement (tawtin) in each of the two countries, before and after the late 1980s-early 1990s. Return and resettlement were taken as the two extremes of a similar demographic policy, and therefore, proved to be powerful political tools for regimes and political actors, at the local, regional and international levels. The theoretical framework of political demography and the “political economy” of Palestinian refugee trends and policies in Jordan and Lebanon also allowed for the Palestinian issue to be resituated in the history and the socio-political context of each country; thus revealing their specific challenges. The essay shows that the granting of civil rights to Palestinians is hampered by its politically-destabilising significance in host countries, where civil rights are constructed as citizenship-bound privileges. Therefore, debates on Palestinian refugees flag up deepening rifts within Jordanian and Lebanese citizenries, and diverging views on political “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1991). In Jordan, such a rift has been deepened by the recent emergence of nationalist movements and by the tensions which emerged in the wake of the Arab uprisings. Representations of national populations as closed, de jure and ethnic-based increasingly oppose views of nationhood as open, de facto and assimilationist.

Migration policy is one of the fields least scrutinized in the Arab world. Responding to international economic trends, policy makers, social partners, and civil society players in Jordan and Lebanon have come to the realization that certain labour market bottlenecks can only be overcome by bringing in foreign workers. This has led to a significant immigration of laborers from a wide variety of countries and forced all relevant participants in the policy making process to renew their interest in coordinated temporary labour migration schemes. Both in Jordan and Lebanon, experts and policy makers alike see opportunities in these schemes that can help them meet the changing demands in their labour markets without permanently adding to their populations and labour forces. In the countries of origin, reciprocally, temporary labour migration schemes are intended to allow governments to alleviate pressures on their labour markets in the short and medium-term, and also let them reap the benefits of migration, through remittances and skill acquisition. In this study the authors will consider, based on a tripartite approach, whether the interests of employers and workers organizations coincide with those of governments in designing and implementing temporary migration schemes. The internationally codified rights of migrant workers to equality and non-discrimination and to their integration into societies and workplaces will be compared to the realities on the ground in Lebanon and Jordan. Have the limited provisions for protecting employees’ rights and a lack of their integration into the host societies negatively affected policy goals, closely linked to social cohesion? Does the effective protection of migrant workers contradict the needs of the indigenous populations in Lebanon and Jordan in general? Can the empowerment of the migrants themselves and their inclusion into the tripartite decision making process facilitate migration policy reform? Which social players can – and have – step in if the state and social partners neglect those roles foreseen for them by the international organizations dealing primarily with migrant labour, first and foremost the International Labour Organization (ILO)?

The study is designed to offer the reader an outline of Jordan’s legal responses to human trafficking. It is divided into five sections: legal framework of human trafficking; child labor and human trafficking; migrant domestic workers and human trafficking; migrant laborers in the qualified industrial zones (Qizs); and finally Jordanian case law. The conclusion then follows these five sections. Cette étude vise à présenter au lecteur les réponses juridiques apportées par la Jordanie à la traite des personnes. Elle est en cinq sections : le cadre juridique de la traite des personnes, le travail des enfants et la traite, les migrants travailleurs domestiques et la traite, les travailleurs migrants dans les zones qualifiées industrielles et enfin la jurisprudence jordanienne. Une conclusion suivra ces cinq sections.

Auf Basis architektur- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Methoden untersucht das Forschungsprojekt die physisch-materiellen und symbolischen Aneignungsprozesse von geflüchteten Menschen an unterschiedlichen Asylorten. Damit rückt es das handlungsrelevante Raumwissen in einer hochmobilen Ausnahmesituation (Flucht) in den Mittelpunkt. Empirisch ist die Studie so angelegt, dass syrische Geflüchtete vergleichend in Deutschland (Berlin) und Jordanien (Zataari) untersucht werden.

Jordan is both a receiving and a sending country for migration. Since its independence, it has received several waves of forced migration as a result of regional instability. Moreover, Jordan is a major receiver of labour migrants, too, especially from Egypt and non-Arab Asian countries, the non Arab-Asian migrants being mainly women and typically employed in the service sector. As to emigration trends, Jordan has long been a sending country, especially to the Arab Gulf states. This note attempts to shed light on the main characteristics of inward and outward Jordanian migration patterns and characteristics in recent times. La Jordanie est à la fois un pays d'origine et d’accueil d’importants flux migratoires. Depuis son indépendance, le pays a accueilli plusieurs vagues de migration forcée liée à des motifs tenant essentiellement à l'instabilité de la région. De plus, il est un pays d’attraction pour les travailleurs migrants originaires, en particulier, d'Egypte et de pays asiatiques non-arabes, ces derniers enregistrant le départ de flux principalement de femmes, employées dans le secteur des services. Quant aux tendances enregistrées dans le champ de l'émigration, la Jordanie s’est longtemps positionnée comme un pays d'émigration, à destination plus particulièrement des Etats du Golfe. Cette analyse se propose de retracer les contours des caractéristiques principales et des tendances enregistrées du phénomène migratoire vers et depuis la Jordanie au cours de la période la plus récente.

This report summarizes findings of two household surveys examining the living conditions of the Palestinian refugee-camp population in Jordan 2011, and examines how the living conditions have evolved since the late 1990s. It finds that people’s overall situation has improved, but that there are significant differences across camps and socio-economic groups, on many indicators.

Since 2012, over 4 million people have fled Syria in ‘the most dramatic humanitarian crisis that we have ever faced’ (UNHCR). By November 2015 there were 1,078,338 refugees from Syria in Lebanon, 630,776 in Jordan and 2,181,293 in Turkey. Humanitarian agencies and donor states from both the global North and the global South have funded and implemented aid programmes, and yet commentators have argued that civil society groups from the global South are the most significant actors supporting refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Whilst they are highly significant responses, however, major gaps in knowledge remain regarding the motivations, nature and implications of Southern-led responses to conflict-induced displacement. This project draws on multi-sited ethnographic and participatory research with refugees from Syria and their aid providers in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey to critically examine why, how and with what effect actors from the South have responded to the displacement of refugees from Syria. The main research aims are: 1. identifying diverse models of Southern-led responses to conflict-induced displacement, 2. examining the (un)official motivations, nature and implications of Southern-led responses, 3. examining refugees’ experiences and perceptions of Southern-led responses, 4. exploring diverse Southern and Northern actors’ perceptions of Southern-led responses, 5. tracing the implications of Southern-led initiatives for humanitarian theory and practice. Based on a critical theoretical framework inspired by post-colonial and feminist approaches, the project contributes to theories of humanitarianism and debates regarding donor-recipient relations and refugees’ agency in displacement situations. It will also inform the development of policies to most appropriately address refugees’ needs and rights. This highly topical and innovative project thus has far-reaching implications for refugees and local communities, academics, policy-makers and practitioners.

The study attempts to identify the economic, social and legal conditions of Syrian refugees residing in Jordan, subsequent to the events of March 2011 in Syria. The study sample consists of 105 interviews, which were conducted with the household heads of Syrian families residing in four governorates; Irbid, Mafraq, Balqa and Amman. The respondents were interviewed and they were asked to answer the 55 question survey included in the study questionnaire. The results of this exploratory study involved significant indicators regarding the challenges and difficulties faced by the Jordanian government as a result of hosting Syrian refugees on its territory. There is an urgent need to support the vital sectors necessary for refugees like health and education and the provision of adequate housing in addition to cash assistance to refugees. Thus, the UNHCR and the international community as a whole have to do their duty towards Syrian refugees in countries where they have taken refuge (Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan).

This study attempts to shed light on the main characteristics of gender and migration from and to Jordan. As to immigration patterns, females account for an increasing proportion of foreign workers in Jordan. They come to cover labor shortages in low-skilled occupations where Jordanians do not wish to work, in the ‘personal and social services’ sector as well as in the Qualified Industrial Zones, where their importance is currently on the rise and where working conditions are unsatisfactory. The main sources of foreign female labor in Jordan are non-Arab Asian States, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. With respect to Jordanians abroad, in 2009 they were estimated at 350,000 individuals, of whom only 16.6% were females. Emigration from Jordan towards other Arab countries (i.e. the most important from a quantitative point of view) is supposed to take place under a temporary project, while emigrants directed towards North American countries, which represent, however, an important proportion of recent migrants, are more long-term oriented. In these latter countries, women, as well as men, tend to be highly-educated and are mainly employed in highly-skilled occupations. Moreover, an important part of this analysis is dedicated to the link between migration and education, which demands an analysis of foreign students in Jordan as well as of Jordanians studying abroad and raises important issues. Finally, the last section of the paper proposes some policy recommendations and in particular argues for new institutions dedicated to migration movements in order to give robust and reliable evidence on Jordanian migration patterns. / Cette étude se propose d’apporter un éclairage aux principales caractéristiques du lien existant entre genre et migration depuis et vers la Jordanie. Les femmes immigrées en Jordanie constituent une part croissante parmi les travailleurs étrangers dans le pays. Elles couvrent généralement des pénuries d’emplois peu qualifiés que les Jordaniens ne veulent eux-mêmes pas occupés, notamment dans le secteur ‘services sociaux et à la personne’ et dans les Zones Qualifiés Industriels, au sein desquels leur nombre croît aujourd’hui, et leurs conditions de travail restent insatisfaisantes. Les principaux flux de femmes travailleuses immigrées sont en provenance de pays non-arabes et asiatiques, en particulier de l’Indonésie, des Philippines et du Sri Lanka. La part des Jordaniens résidant à l’étranger est estimée, au titre de l’année 2009, à hauteur de 350 000 individus, incluant une proportion de 16,6% de femmes. Les principaux flux d’émigration à destination d’autres Etats arabes s’inscrivent, en principe, dans une stratégie à court terme, alors que les émigrants à destination de l’Amérique du Nord - lesquels représentent une importante proportion parmi l’émigration récente -, s’inscrivent dans un projet migratoire à plus long terme. S’agissant de ces dernières destinations et à l’instar des hommes, les femmes sont davantage issues de l’enseignement supérieur, et sont principalement employées dans des postes hautement qualifiés. En outre, un important segment de cette analyse sera consacré à l’analyse du lien existant entre migration et éducation - lequel part d’une enquête menée sur un échantillon d’étudiants étrangers résidents en Jordanie, et d’étudiants jordaniens résidant à l’étranger -, dont il conviendra de tirer un certain nombre de conclusions. Enfin, la dernière section de cette note énonce une série de recommandations et préconise, en particulier, le développement de nouvelles institutions consacrées à l’analyse des mouvements migratoires en vue de dresser un tableau plus compréhensif des caractéristiques de la migration jordanienne.

This report covers migration in 18 EU neighbouring countries, including: Algeria; Armenia; Azerbaijan; Belarus; Egypt; Georgia; Jordan; Lebanon; Libya; Mauritania; Moldova; Morocco; Palestine; Russia; Syria; Tunisia; Turkey and Ukraine. Each country report provides the most recent update on the demographic, legal, and socio-political aspects of both inward and outward migration stocks and flows.

This report presents the main findings of a household survey conducted in the Jordanian governorates of Amman, Irbid and Mafraq between February and March 2014, aimed at assessing the implications of the large influx of Syrian Refugees onto the labour market in the three geographical areas. The results are based on information gathered on the current labour market situation, as well as some of the changes that have occurred since the beginning of the Syrian Refugee influx into Jordan in March 2011.

The proposal includes three studies in the field of international relations. These studies examine the political dimensions of international cooperation in law enforcement. Study 1 explores why states succeed or fail to cooperate against smuggling along a shared border. The goal is to explain why Jordan has cooperated with Israel in combating smugglers of goods and persons, whereas Egypt has been less cooperative. Based on fieldwork in the Israel-Egypt and Israel-Jordan border areas, the study links governments' domestic political concerns to their efforts against smuggling. Study 2 examines the Israeli efforts against intellectual property piracy of American and European goods. Based on fieldwork in Israel, this study explains why Israel's enforcement of intellectual property rights is ineffective. Study 3 examines international cooperation among courts in combating parental child-abduction. This study explains the origin and evolution of the unique international regime that tackles child abduction. The study also explains why many countries have been reluctant to join this regime. The study involves fieldwork in Europe and the United States as well as interviews with judges at international judicial conferences. The three studies advance the analysis of the politics of law enforcement within the field of international relations. These studies also offer important insights for policy.

This paper tackles the socio-political aspects of gender and migration in Jordan. Our concern is to figure out whether and, if so, how public debate, institutional setup and specific governmental or government-approved policies targeting migrant women are gendered, i.e., how gender policies articulate with migratory policies, how gender determines migrants’ experience, in terms of, for instance, life cycle and employment. We also inquire about the purposes of such policies. Our main conclusion is that, though public debate is indeed gendered, migration policies are not. On immigration, gender does not have priority over other characteristics of the migrant in the overall policy-making process on migration. However, there exists an economic sector-selective gendering of policies targeting female migrants in Jordan. This process is rooted in the political necessity of engineering female and migrant issues to respond to Jordanian nationals’ concerns. As for females’ emigration and, especially, a new trend involving mainly unmarried skilled young women directed at the Arab Gulf States, it has been so far ignored in the public debate, caught between the ‘open door’ policy and the institutional setup of Jordan’s ‘blocked society’. In the Jordanian context, migration, indeed, hardly allows female empowerment let alone female immigrants in Jordan. Therefore the paper advocates a stronger involvement on the part of sending countries’ in the defence of their nationals employed abroad, especially given the situation of female English domestic workers. / Cet article traite des aspects sociopolitiques de la relation entre genre et migration en Jordanie. Nous cherchons à comprendre si et comment le débat public, le contexte institutionnel et les politiques gouvernementales (ou soutenues par le gouvernement) visant les femmes migrantes sont genrées. Comment les politiques dans le domaine du genre s’articulent-elles aux politiques migratoires ? En quoi le genre détermine-t-il l’expérience des migrants, en termes de cycle de vie, de travail et d’emploi, par exemple ? Nous nous intéressons également aux objectifs de ces politiques. La conclusion principale de ce rapport est la suivante : le débat public prend en compte la question du genre mais les politiques migratoires l’ignorent le plus souvent. Concernant l’immigration, nous montrons que le genre ne pèse pas plus que d’autres facteurs dans le processus global de conception et de mise en œuvre des politiques migratoires. Cependant, on peut repérer une sélection par le genre dans certains secteurs économiques ouverts aux travailleurs immigrés, dont l’exemple le plus emblématique est l’emploi domestique. Ce processus a pour origine la nécessité politique d’instrumentaliser les questions de la femme et de la migration en réponse aux préoccupations des citoyens jordaniens. La question de l’émigration des femmes, en particulier le récent mouvement de femmes jeunes et célibataires vers les pays du Golfe, est pour sa part absente du débat public. Celui-ci reste en effet prisonnier de la politique de la « porte ouverte » mais surtout du contexte institutionnel d'une société jordanienne « bloquée ». Le contexte jordanien n’est donc pas toujours propice à l’autonomisation (empowerment) des femmes jordaniennes mais encore moins à celle des migrantes étrangères. Notre étude appelle donc les autorités des pays d’origine des migrantes à s’investir plus fortement dans la défense des intérêts de leurs ressortissantes expatriées, et de manière urgente dans celle des domestiques asiatiques.

The Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZ) are areas designated by the Jordanian and Israeli authorities and approved by the U.S. Government, where products can be exported duty free to the United States, making use of the Israeli Free Trade Area Agreement with the U.S. The QIZs represent an unprecedented opportunity to gain duty and quota-free entry into the U.S market, with 100 % exemption of the export earning from income and social services taxes, and no customs duties payment on imported raw materials, fixed assets, and spare parts. QIZ products can include material content from any part of the world, but 35 % of the appraised value must be added in the QIZ. The labour standards and working conditions in those zones started being highlighted, at the national and international levels, following the release of the first relevant report of the National Labour Committee (NLC), of the United States , in May 2006, which then described the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement, due to the deterioration of working conditions of migrant workers in those zones, as Descending into Human Trafficking & Involuntary Servitude. The Jordanian Government’s inspection and verification campaigns that followed the NLC report, showed that the labour and OSH standards in many QIZ enterprises, and even human standards in some cases, did not meet the minimum acceptable limits, as per both international and national standards. The Jordanian Government’s response was prompt and proved to be very effective. The most successful reform was the one of the labour inspection system, which was the tool by which the Government closely monitored and followed-up working conditions in the zones, and through which it imposed serious sanctions against violators, such as permanently closing down some of those enterprises, the employers and/or managements of which failed to abide by the law. Almost 5 years following the release of the NLC report, this study shows that nearly none of the past violations reported by the NLC still exist in the QIZs. Labour rights, in terms of wages, working hours and leaves are protected. Occupational safety, health standards and human rights have seen great improvement and are also fully respected. There are no more confiscated passports, no more reported cases of physical, sexual, or verbal abuse and no more cases of forced labour or discrimination of any form. The number of QIZ enterprises and the number of their workers, both local and migrant, reached their peaks in 2006. There was then a decline in numbers until 2009, as a double effect of the Government’s action to rectify the labour standards in those zones as well as the Global Economic Crisis. The crisis, besides affecting Jordan, also directly affected the U.S. importers and buyers, for whom all QIZs’ manufacturers produce. The numbers of workers in those zones showed some increase in 2010, which could be an indicator of a recovery from such effects. The exports of the QIZs have also reached their peak level in 2006, but since then showed progressive decline, due to the factors mentioned above. No adequate statistics could be gathered on the total exports from those zones for the whole year of 2010. However, if the monthly average of exports for the first seven months of 2010, which are included in this study, could be applied to the last five months of the same year, then 2010’s exports would exceed those of 2009 by about 22%. The QIZ sector can be presently considered as one of the most successful sectors concerning working conditions and OSH in Jordan, where most of national and international labour standards are observed. The findings of this report represent the general situation existing in the QIZs in Jordan, at the time of the study. There are off course possible exceptions to be found, but these are often on a small scale and in concealed or unreported cases.