Sunrise in Amman. Florent Lamoureux/Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Since the 1970s, domestic workers have been migrating to the Middle East for work, often enduring exploitation, abuse, and even human trafficking in the process.
Domestic workers may pay high recruitment fees to labour brokers, essentially paying for a position that will trap them in debt bondage. Vague employment contracts – or contract terms that change once they arrive in the country – allow for abuses such as excessive hours, the denial of requests for time off, dangerous working conditions, forced labour, and wage theft to occur. And migrant workers in Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries are subject to the kafala (sponsorship) system, which ties work and residency permits to a single employer who consequently has near-absolute power in the employer-employee relationship.
