Irregular Migration in Jordan, 1995-2007

Abstract

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.