Captive Labour: Sri Lankan 'Guest' Workers in Jordan

AbstractThe presence of Asian domestic workers has become an indelible but often unacknowledged part of life in contemporary Amman. This article focuses on the largest group of foreign domestic workers in Jordan — Sri Lankans. Drawing on 24 months of ethnographic research in Amman and a migrant-sending community in Sri Lanka, it discusses Jordan's growing demand for paid domestic workers and describes their working conditions, arguing that they are tantamount to bonded labour. Moving beyond static portrayals of employers as villains, the author suggests that the infrastructure for exploitation has been laid by the Jordanian state's migration regime.