" “We Escape to the Roof to Breathe”: Inhabiting Jordan’s Dormitory Migrant Labor Regime", 15 March 2025

Secluded in Jordan’s industrial zones, migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, China and Madagascar sew sports and outdoor clothing for large US brands. Two thirds[i] of the 78,000 workers[ii] employed in Jordan’s export-oriented garment industry today are foreign.

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The dormitories have long been a central pillar of Jordan’s garment labor regime. This is so because the spatial confinement of workers between factories and dormitories plays a decisive role in achieving high productivity and profitability in Jordan’s clothing factories. The workers’ constant availability and disposition to work extreme overtime hours[v]—due the alienation from socially reproductive roles and basic salaries below the Jordanian minimum wage [vi]—allow suppliers to fulfill the extreme time and cost pressures of large US clothing brands.

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“I can’t survive without this fan,” Rachel admits, “I let it blow directly into my face when I lie down, it is the only way to not suffocate at night.” While a central ventilator hangs from the dorm ceiling, it is often out-of-order. “It’s a constant struggle to make the air in the room circulate, but the situation gets worse in the summer with the dust storms and heat,”

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They underline that “the factory” closely monitors all aspects of their private lives and that anything that happens in the dormitory will directly impact their employment relation. The resulting, all-encompassing control regime operationalizes the legal kafala system by complementing legal precarity and dependence on the employer with de-facto spatial and temporal containment.