Writer: Katharina Lenner, Aslı Salihoğlu, Cameron Thibos
The garment sector is a key site of work for marginalised nationals, refugees, and migrant workers in Jordan and Türkiye. Their conditions of work and relationships with each other in and outside the workplace are critical for social cohesion and conflict prevention in the areas where they live. This project explores how different models of governance for the garment sector – largely formalised and controlled in Jordan and diffused and informal in Türkiye – affect labour conditions, inter-communal cohesion, and policy actors’ efforts around social protection. In doing so, it contributes to the evidence base on what social protection initiatives are possible and effective in each context.
This research brief casts light on the study’s findings that in both settings, long working hours and low wages largely prevent meaningful interaction between workers and limit de facto social protection. The Jordanian garment sector furthermore maintains control by deliberately keeping groups apart, while the urban Turkish setting allows some non-national workers to cross groups and thereby expand informal forms of social protection. Overall, the study shows that formalised work and social security subscription as such do not ensure meaningful social protection, particularly for non-nationals. Policy initiatives need to take workers’ own social protection strategies, and the trade-offs they are willing to make, into account to make a difference.
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