Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how a Workers Centre initially set up as an entertainment space became transformed into a crucial site for grievance articulation and collective organising of predominantly South Asian migrant workers in Jordan's export-oriented garment industry.

Paper long abstract:

A Free Trade Agreement between Jordan and the United States – granted as a geopolitical present for signing peace with Israel – has prompted transnational Asian suppliers to relocate parts of their garment manufacturing process to Jordanian industrial zones. Across Jordan, 70.000 workers today produce apparel for the US market and 75% of these workers are foreign. The largest constituency of migrant workers are young women recruited from Bangladesh and the second largest group consists of male workers from India. This paper argues that the articulation of labour grievances on Jordanian shop floors is almost impossible. The migrant workers’ extreme legal precarity under the kefala system; the lack of freedom of association and the non-representation of migrant workers in the only government-authorised labour union; as well as the highly restrictive laws of assembly; mean that most mobilisation attempts in factories result in the deportation of workers or generalised recruitment stops. To examine alternative possibilities for the articulation of grievances and claim-making beyond the factory, this paper thus turns to an examination of the Workers Centre in the Al-Hassan industrial zone. Co-established by the ILO and a private garment manufacturer in 2014, the Centre has been transformed from an entertainment space into a central site of labour advocacy and organising over the past decade. Four women – from India, Madgascar, Bangladesh and Jordan – played a central role in subverting the Centre’s original purpose, turning it into a safe space for the articulation of labour grievances and for collective organising.