Discouragement and disillusionment Although we did not find a large proportion of ‘discouraged workers’ in Jerash in the survey data, the rhetoric of disillusionment with the extra barriers faced in finding work was common to almost all our interviews. Ex-Gazans often reported being rejected from jobs (outside camps) solely on the basis of not having a national ID number, even when there was no explicit legal restriction in place. On the other hand, they also reported being rejected for jobs in favour of foreign migrant workers because of their higher expectations in terms of pay and working conditions. As a young man in Hitteen put it: ‘for him [the employer], the Bengali and the ex-Gazan are the same, they are both not citizens. The Bengali takes 70 or 80 JD. The ex-Gazan wants 300 or 350 JD. So they employee Bengalis instead’172. They thus fall into an uncomfortable middle ground where they lack the advantages of full citizenship or the advantage of being able or willing to accept much lower salaries than local workers. A number of groups face differential labour conditions in Jordan, but these are generally ‘outsiders’, such as Sri Lankan textile workers, Filipino domestic workers or Egyptian janitors and day labourers, and, more recently, Syrian refugees. In contrast, ex-Gazans, a majority of whom are born in Jordan, have generally similar expectations to their Jordanian counterparts. Differentiating themselves from other groups of non-nationals, many interviewees express a strong sense of grievance that they are formally treated differently from Jordanians both in the labour market and in terms of rights. Talking about her exGaza husband, a young Jordanian woman living in Jerash explained: There are no jobs there [Jerash] because he’s [ex-Gaza] Palestinian. Even now as a sanitation worker, he’s suffering; those with a national number receive just over 400 JD for this. [...] So he’s quit working: he says “why am I working! I gather trash, and the Jordanian’s salary is 400 JD — why am I any different!” [...] Even today he told me: “see, even as a sanitation worker, the Jordanian’s salary is 300 or 400, and the [ex-Gaza] Palestinian’s salary is 190”. There’s a [ex-Gaza] Palestinian working there for eight years [...] and his salary is still 190 JD. The Jordanian’s salary has increased. […] Each five months it is increased 20 or 30 JD, so the Jordanian’s salary reaches 400 JD or so 173. For some, this sense of grievance is significant enough that they may report it as a reason for turning down work if the terms offered are perceived as insulting to their pride, despite the unemployment rate for ex-Gaza men in Jerash aged 25 to 59 being notably higher than either other ex-Gazans or other Palestinian camp refugees (see chapter 6, Figure 22). There is also a sense that there is a lack of fairness in the hiring system in general, with citizens and those with wasta more likely to be hired. We saw in chapter 6 that ex-Gazans, like other Palestinian camp refugees, mainly rely on their connections to get jobs; however, when these connections are less valuable — because the community is poorer and because they are less likely to have connections to people working in the government — what you manage to get with these connections in terms of employment opportunities is also less valuable. A man in his mid-20s explained that ‘even if we are working for the municipality or the government, we wouldn't even get 300 JD. Of course, you need to get wasta [to work in the municipality]’ 174. We would expect this sense of grievance to interact with their experience of struggling to find work and regular rejection and difficulties getting transport to work outside the Male, age 23, Hitteen camp, 14 February 2016. Female, age 21, Jerash camp, 21 January 2016. 174 Male, age 26, Hitteen camp, 21 February 2016. 172 173 Fafo Report 2019:34 106