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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

"The Socioeconomic Experiences of Families
of Migrant Workers in Jordan"

presented by

Husein Farhan Ismail

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. Sociology

degree in

WM {44

Major profess?»

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THE SOCIOECONOMIC EXPERIENCES OF FAMILIES OF MIGRANT WORKERS
IN JORDAN

BY

Husein Farhan Ismail

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
‘ for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

College of Social Science
Department of Sociology

1989

6040007

ABSTRACT

THE SOCIOECONOHIC EXPERIENCES OF FAMILIES OF MIGRANT WORKERS

IN JORDAN

BY

Husien Farhan Ismail

W

This research seeks to determine the extent and nature
of the socioeconomic experiences of the families of out
migrant workers in Jordan.

The data were obtained through personal interviews with
the migrants' families. The following experiences resulting
from labor migration were measured: (1) economic change at
the household level; (2) household management; (3)
children's discipline; (4) aand the unity of the family.
These consequences of labor migration are examined within
four social strata in Jordanian society: high, middle, and
low urban areas, and the village.

Three principal factors that effect the experiences of
migrants' families are (1) whether or not the family
accompanied the household head abroad, (2) the mother's
level of education and career, and (3) the area of residence
( the social class).

Findings from this research indiCate a high level of

savings among most families who stayed home. They also

indicate better school achievement among children of
families who accompanied their father.

Women from the higher urban stratum who remained in
Jordan were much more likely than other women to manage
their families. Women from this stratum who accompanied
their husbands abroad were very likely to complain about the
limited opportunities for a normal social life in the host
country. Most of the women from the middle urban stratum who
remained home were left under the management of in-laws,
regardless of their level of education or career status. In
the low income and village strata, almost half of the women
who remained home were left under the management of in-laws
or their eldest son.

The percentage of families who were prevented from
accompanying their household-head abroad was greatest in the
,low income urban stratum. These families were also most
likely to report school dropouts, bloody fighting, robbery,
and drinking among their children. These problems were
especially prevalent when the mother was very poorly
educated and was not managing the household.

The findings of this research suggest that the social
costs for migrants' families who remain home are greater
than the economic benefits they derived from remittances.
Labor migration contributes to family instability and
behavior problems among children, especially in the high and

low urban strata.

To: the memory of my mother,
Saa'deyya; my father Farhan;
my wife, Safa; and my sons,
Ahmad, Ebrahim,and
Mohammed Amin

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank professor Olsen, my major advisor
and Chairman of the doctoral committee for his guidance,
suggestions and knowledge he provided me throughout the
research.‘

I I would like also to thank the doctoral committee
members professors: Ruth Hamilton, Richard Hill, Joe Darden,
and Fauzi Najjar for their constructive critiques and
support throughout this research.

Special thanks goes to the Urban Affairs Programs
represented in professor J. Darden, for giving me the
opportunity of working as research assistance.

Special thanks goes to my wife, for her support
throughout the entirety of my doctoral studies. My family in
Jordan deserves special recognition for their encouragement
and support.

Last, but not least, I would also like to thank friends
and community leaders (especially Mr. Abu Reiadh and Mr. Abu'
Hashem) who helped me implenting this research in a

relatively critical time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE
LIST OF TABLES .... ...................... . ......................... Vii
CHAPTER

I INTRODUCTION 000000000000000000000000000000000000 ......... 000001

Background .................................................. l
Policies in Labor Exporting Countries ..................... 3

Policies in Labor Importing Countries ..... ........ ........4
Consequences of Labor Migration Policies on the Social Life
of the Migrants' Families ...............................5
Focus of the Research ......... ..... ..... ..... ....... .........7
PtOblen 00000000000000.0000. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 0007
Statement of the Problem .. ................................ .7
Expectations .............................. .......... ...... 10
Explanatory Factors ........ ............... .................13
Objectives and Overview ....... ..... . ......... ...... ..... ....14
Theoretical Background ......... ......... .... ......... .......16

Labor Migration from an Economic Perspective ...............16
Labor Migration in the Arab World ..........................22
Labor Migration Policies in Labor Exporting Countries ......23
Policies in Labor Importing Countries ....... ..... .. ....... .25

Labor Migration In Social Perspective .............. ......... .29
Consequences of Labor Migration on Labor Importing

Societies ...............................................29
Consequences of Labor Migration on Labor Exporting

Societies ........... ....... .................... ....... ..31
Jordanian Migrant Worker, SocioeconomicPerspective............37
Government's Economic Policy ... ...... ......................37

The Economic Consequences of Labor Migration on Jordanin
society ................................................42

Social Perspective .........................................46

The Social Impact of Labor Migration on Jordanian Pamilies..52

II METHODOLOGY 0000000000000 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 000 .......... 0000000056

study Areas0000000000000000000000.0000000000.0000000000000000 56

sampling 000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000 0 00000000 61

vi

Data Collection Procedure . ..... . ...................... . ...... 65

Data Analysis Procedure ..................... ..... . ......... ..67
III RESEARCH FINDINGS ...................................... ...... .70
Economic Changes at the Household Level ................. ....71
Sub-question 1A . .......... ..... ........................... .72
Sub-question 18 ............................................76
sub-question 1C .......... ....... . .......................... 81
Household Management ............. .. ......................... 84
Sub-question 2A ...................... ....... ..............86
Sub-question 28 . ........ ........ ...... ..... ............ ....88
Sub-question 2C ......... ...... .. ........................... 89
Children's Discipline ........................................ 97
Sub-question 3A ....................................... .....101
Sub-question 33 ............................................ 103
Sub-question 3C ................ ....... . ................... .106
Unity of the Family ........ ................................. .112
Sub-question 4A ...................... .................... .113
Sub-question 4B ...........................................117
Conclusion ........ ................................. .........124
validity of the Findings ... ....................... . ......... .124
Household Head Education ... ........ . ................... ....125
Vives' Occupational Status .. ............... .. ........ ......125

Village Men's Occupation ..................................126

IV DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION ........................ 128
Eonomic Change at the Household Level .. .................... ..128

Household Management .........................................133

Children's Discipline ..... ................................... 139
Unity of the Family ......................................... .143
Conclusions ................ ................................. 147
Questions to be Asked in Future Research .................... .149
Policy Implications . ........................ . ............ 150

vii

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... ...... ...... ...

APPENDIX eeeeeee eeeeeeeee eeee

viii

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE PAGE

1 DIFFERENCES IN THE PERCENTAGE OF FAMILIES WHO ACCOMPANIED THE
HOUSEHOLD HEAD AND THOSE WHO DID NOT, FOR THE TOTAL SAMPLE
MD BY STRATA 0000000000000000 000000000000000 0 00000000 0000074

2 PERCENTAGES OF FAMILIES REPORTING SAVING VARIOUS PROPORTIONS OF
THEIR INCOME, FOR THE TOTAL SAMPLE AND FOR ACCOMPANYING AND

'NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES ... ........ .. ........... . .......... 74
3 PERCENTAGE OF SAVINGS ACCORDING TO STRATA ..... ..... ..........77
4 THE PERCENTAGE OF FAMILIES WITH SAVINGS GREATER OF 30 PERCENT

MORE OF INCOME BY STRATA ...... . ............................. 77
5 AREAS OF INVESTMENTS FOR MIGRANTS' FAMILIES .................... 80
6 HOUSEHOLD MANAGERS AMONG NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES ...... .......85

7 THE RELATION OF WIVES' EDUCATIONAL LEVEL TO HOUSEHOLD CONTROL
IN FAMILIES WHICH DID NOT ACCOMPANY THEIR HOUSEHOLD HEAD ....87

8 PROPORTIONS OF NON-ACCOMPANYING WIVES WITH SERVICE SECTOR
CAREERS WHO MANAGED THEIR HOUSEHOLD ..... .................... 90

9 HOUSEHOLD MANAGERS AMONG NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES BY STRATA .}.90

10 NON-ACCOMPANYING WIVES' EDUCATION ACCORDING TO THE AREA OF
RESIDENCE 00000000000000000000000000000000000 00000 0000 0000000 92

11 CHILD'S SCHOOL PERFORMANCE AND DROPOUT RATE ............. ....... 98

12 MOTHERS EDUCATION AND CHILDREN'S SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT AMONG*
NON-ACCOMPMYING FMILIES 00000000000000.00000000000000000000100

13 CHANGES IN LEVEL OF ACHIEVEMENT FOR THOSE CHILDREN WHO TOOK
HOUSEHOLD RESPONSIBILITIES AMONG NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES
MD THOSE mo DID NOT 00000000000000 00000 00 000000000000 000000104

14 THE PERCENTAGE OF CHILDREN WITH IMPROVED SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT
LEVELS AMONG THOSE WHO ACCOMPANIED THEIR FATHERS AND THOSE
no DID NOT 000000000000000000000000 000000 0000000 000000000000 107

15 THE PERCENTAGE OF DROPOUT AMONG MIGRANTS' CHILDREN WHO
ACCOMPANIED THEIR FATHERS AND THOSE WHO DID NOT ..... ....... 107

ix

16
17
18

19

HOUSEHOLD HEAD'S EDUCATION .....................................109
FAMILY PROBLEMS IN COMPARISON TO SOCIAL-INTERACTION PROBLEMS....114
WIVES' PROBLEMS WITH HUSBAND BY STRATA .... ......... ............118

WIVES' SOCIAL INTERACTION PROBLEMS BY STRATA ...... .............121

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
AND
CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND

W

Labor migration as a process is not a new phenomenon.
In the past, migrants, individually or collectively, often
sought better jobs and lives in other lands. Their families
frequently accompanied them, and many became citizens of the
new country. This movement of migrants used to be on
individual bases and was not strictly controlled by the
policies of either the sending or receiving country.
However, the present labor migration is totally different.
Today's labor migration is highly controlled by both labor
importing and exporting countries for political, social, and
economic reasons.

Jordan is one of the countries most affected by labor
migration (Saa'd-El-Dean and Abd—Al-Fadeil, 1983), in part
due to the sudden jump of its population after the 1948 and
1967 wars, and in part to the immigration of more than one
and half million Palestinians (the only country in the
Middle East where more than half of its three million
population are refugees) (Zaghal, 1984). This was
accompanied by the increase dependence of world market on

the Middle East. oil and the need for more and more

technicians to work in the developmental projects in the
Arab oil countries. This led to the migration of more than
342,000 Jordanian worker to other countries according to
latest estimate of 1985, which was more than one third of
the total labor force in Jordan (Ibrahim, 1986). Those
Jordanian workers found themselves surrounded by thousands
of other workers from all around the world. They also faced
more and more restrictive policies by the Arab oil countries
to control that huge migration of workers.

This study seeks to understand the socioeconomic
consequences of labor migration on Jordanian families.
Jordan's case can be used as an example to understand the
socioeconomic experiences of families of out migrant workers
in who work in the Arab oil countries given their similar
social backgrounds.

0n the national level in Jordan, several researchers
have emphasized the economic aspects of out-labor migration.
For example, Secombe (1980) and El-Saket (1983) concluded
that on one hand, out-labor migration provides the national
economy with a considerable amount of foreign exchange. On
the other hand, however, the increase in expenditures on
imported goods by migrants' families increases the need for
foreign exchange to balance the national trade deficit
(Secombe, 1980; El-Saket, 1983). Nevertheless, the social

costs on the migrants' families are undoubtedly

considerable, especially in the long run, which has been
largely ignored (Keely and El-Saket, 1984; Burki, 1984).

The out minrants' families socioeconomic experiences
resulting from labor migration are the focus of this
research. To understand the extent of the problem, a
discussion of policies for labor exporting and labor
importing countries regarding migration is necessary.
We:

Labor exportation is viewed as a profitable economic
activity for the governments in labor exporting countries.
Many writers, (El-Saket, 1983; Shah, 1985; Wilch, 1988;
Shalaledin, 1984; Fergany, 1982) have discussed how
Jordanian, Pakistani, Egyptian, Sudanese and Yemeni
governments consider the flow of remittances as a solution
for unemployment and an element in balancing their foreign
trade deficit. These governments usually seek to increase
the number of training institutions to meet the local and
foreign demands for skilled workers. More than 380.000
Jordanian worker (one-third of the Jordanian labor force)
and 3.5 million Egyptian worker (seven percent of the
Egyptian labor force) are presently working abroad, mainly
in the Arab oil countries and the Gulf States. Remittances
from Jordanian migrant workers in 1982 accounted for
one-third of the national foreign exchange needed to balance
the Jordanian foreign trade deficit. For example, in 1984

the amount of remittances through the banks in Jordan

totaled more than 966 million (US) dollars. It also amounted
to 3.3 billion (US) dollars through the Egyptian banks in
1987, and 1,056 million (US) dollars through the Sudanese
banks in that same year (Kifner, 1985).

These figures give a clear picture of the importance of
labor migration for the labor-exporting countries and the
reason why their policies encourage labor migration.
WWW

After the rise in oil prices during the early
seventies, the Arab oil countries experienced increasing
needs for foreign workers to construct roads, housing, and
governmental facilities, all of which demanded a large
number of professionals, engineers, and skilled and
unskilled workers. They also needed a substantial number of
teachers and university professors for their educational
institutions. In addition, because governments in the Arab
oil countries began to take a more active role in providing
free public services to "their” people, they drained
professionals from the labor exporting countries (Owen,
1982).

The Arab oil governments did not allow this movement of
foreign workers to go uncontrolled. Governments in these
countries enacted many laws against foreign workers. These
laws can be summarized as follows:

1- migrants' contracts are limited in place of work and in

time (five years at the maximum, but renewable). Only

those who earn above a certain salary, or are employed
in particular technical or professional occupations
(such as engineers, doctors and university professors)
are allowed to bring their dependents.

2- Migrants have limited access to free education
(especially in universities) and limited access to
medical care, which forces them to pay for private
schools and private health care. Their children usually
find it difficult or impossible to be admitted to
universities to study engineering or medicine. This
forces those children to return to their home countries

for higher education (Owen, 1982).

WI:
W31

From the above discussion, it seems reasonable to
conclude that these policies work in favor of separation
between migrant workers and their families which could lead
to drastic effects on the socioeconomic life of those
families. So far, most of the research on labor migration
has focused on the economic aspects of this problem. Social
impacts were studied as a minor side-effect. The previous
studies did not emphasize the variables that could work for
or against the welfare of the migrants' family. Keely and
El-Saket (1984) argued more research be conducted on this
topic, since their data indicated many problems between

wives and in-laws. However, they did not control many

variables such as the wife's age, education or career
status. Burki (1984), drawing on his observations in
Pakistan, concluded that labor migration had a liberating
effect on the women in labor exporting country. Ibrahim
(1978) went further to suggest that labor migration would
lead to a new social order, including feminization of the
family, in labor exporting countries. In contrast,
Saa'd-El-Dean and Abd-Al-Fadeil (1983) indicated that 40
percent of the divorce cases in the Northern District of the
Sudan were caused by migration of the husband. In addition,
drawing upon many interviews with school principles in
Sudan, Saa'd El-Dean and Abd-Al-Fadeil suggested that the
father's absence would lead to deterioration in their
children's school achievement and many discipline problems.
They drew similar conclusions from interviews with Yemenis
social services researchers. The Yemenis children assumed
the roles of adults at a younger age, began using drugs
(al-qat), and started smoking. Azzam and Sharib (1980) found
that, in contrast to their expectation that wives would
welcome their husband's migration in order to obtain more
freedom, many Lebanese women objected to the migration of
their husbands because that increased their

responsibilities.

WW

Based on this discussion, it seems reasonable to expect
that the laws and conditions surrounding migrant workers in
the host countries have tremendous socioeconomic impacts on
the labor exporting countries. In Jordan the previous
research mainly focused on national economic concerns such
as national economic development, national labor markets,
national balance of payments, etc. The social experiences
and problems of migrants' families have been seriously
underestimated and have never been fully explained in
evaluating the costs and benefits of labor migration.
According to a recent research by Share' (1987), out-labor
migration from Jordan may provide a net gain for the country
only as long as the social costs are not considered in this

evaluation.

W

The problem of this research is to determine the extent
and the nature of the socioeconomic experiences that
out-labor migration seem to have among out migrant workers'
families in Jordan. More specifically, this study addresses
three major issues: 1) The scope and variety of changes
taking place in family life, structure, and ties with the

extended family among those who stayed at home and those who

accompanied their household head. 2) How and why the

families of the migrants vary in terms of such changes,

especially between families in different social classes. 3)

How families cope with such changes. The specific questions

addressed in this research are as follows.

1. W The first set
of questions examined in this study consider changes in
saving and investment patterns among families of
migrants. To examine this aspect of change, the topic
has been divided into several sub-questions:
lA- What differences exist between the saving patterns
of migrants' families who accompanied the household
head and those who stayed home?

13- What differences exist in saving and spending
patterns among migrants' families in the various social
strata in the Jordanian society?

1C- On what new areas of investment were the families
of migrants spending their remittances?

2. flgngghfild_flangggment; The second set of questions in
this study examine changes in the wife's role after the
husband's migration. To examine this aspect of change,
the topic of household management has been divided into
several sub-questions.
2A- Does the wife' education affect her role after the

husband's migration?

30

28- Does the career status of the wife affect the role
she takes after her husband's migration?

ZC- Does the wife's "social background" (being from a
rural or urban area) affect the role she takes after
her husband's migration?

thlfi;gn;s_niggiplin L The third set of questions in
this study considers the effects of the father's
migration on the educational achievement and behavior
of children. To examine this aspect of change the topic
of children's discipline has been divided into several
sub-questions.

3Ar How does the mother's level of education affect the
behavior and the level of school achievement of the
children of migrants?

38- How do the responsibilities placed on children
after their father's migration affect their level of
school achievement and their behavior?

30- How does the area of residence affect the level of
school achievement and the behavioral problems of
children after their father's migration?
Qn1§y_gfi_tng__flam111L The fourth set of questions in
this study considers the effects of the husband's
migration on the unity of their families. To examine
this aspect of change, the topic of the unity of the

family has been divided into two sub-questions.

10

4A How well is the family unity maintained in families

who do not accompany the head of the household?
48- How does the area of residence of migrants affect

the occurrence of problems between husbands and wives?

Ernectatinns.

W M a result of

the new policies of Arab oil countries (which resulted
in decreases in the numbers and the wages of labor
migrants to those countries which lead in turn to
decreases in the amount of remittances and the level of
inflation in Jordan), the proportions of savings by
families of migrants would increase. However, this
would depend on several factors:

1A- For three reasons, it was expected that families
who accompanied the household head would be able to
save more than those who did not; (a) the household
head would remain in control of the household's
financial affairs; (b) the family would not have the
expenses of two houses, one at home and another abroad;
and (c) inflation has been lower in the Arab oil
countries than in Jordan.

18- Professionals from the high urban stratum and
villagers would be able to save more than others, since
high professionals receive high income and villagers

live with less expensive everyday life.

11

1C- Due to the recent decline in remittances,
investments in small retail stores (which depends
mostly on the presence of foreign exchange for
importing goods) would decrease in profitability. More
people, it was thought, would invest in agriculture and
in stocks. Construction of buildings to be rented
still expected to be the leading form of investment.
flgngghgld_flanaggmen§_ It was expected that wives would
play a larger role in managing their household affairs
after their husbands' migration (Burki, 1984). This
would depend on:

2A- More educated wives would be more likely to manage
their household affairs.

23- Wives pursuing careers would be more likely to
manage their household affairs.

2C- WOmen from urban backgrounds would be more likely
to manage their household, while rural women would be
more likely to be under the management of in-laws.
thld;enlg_fligginling;_It was expected that the level
of education and the behavior of children would
deteriorate after their fathers' migration. Children
who accompanied their fathers would be better educated
(Saa'd El-Deen and Abd-Al—Eadeil, 1983). The school
achievement for those who stayed home would depend on:
3A- Children who have better educated mothers would be

more likely to do better in school.

12

38. Children who had more responsibility for their
family's affairs during their father's absence would
have less time for higher achievement in school and may
drop out of school.

3c- Children who accompanied their household head would
have fewer problems in school achievement and dropping
out than those who did not. For those who accompanied
their father, no differences in school performance or
dropout would be expected among the various strata in
the sample. For those who stayed home, it was expected
that the area of residence would affect the child's
level of achievement after the father's migration,
since their education would be regarded as less
important in the low income stratum.
unity_gf__;he__£amily; Problems between husbands and
wives would increase as a result of the husbands'
migration (Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-Al-Fadeil, 1983). This
would depend on:

4A- Families that accompanied the household head would
have fewer problems, and hence greater family unity.
43- Families from rural areas who stayed home would
experience the most problems of interference by in-laws
in the wives' personal affairs, and this interference
would, in turn, affect the wives' relationships with

their husbands.

13

Wt:

Three principal factors that appear to explain many of

the major differences in the socioeconomic experiences of

migrants' families are given prticular attention in this

research:

1.

When
head_ab;gad‘Although a majority of the migrant workers

leave their families in Jordan, the families of some
workers -- especially higher-status professional and
technical workers -- may accompany the migrant worker.
Families who accompanied the migrant worker abroad
frequently experienced different conditions and
problems than did the families who remained at home.
MW Area of
residence incorporates two distinct variables: (a)
socioeconomic status, which is divided in this study
into the three levels of high, medium, and low; and (b)
urban versus rural resience. Both of these variables --
which are built into tha sampling design of the study--
appear to produce numerous differences in experiences
and problems among migrants' families.
“WM—manna
career. This factor also incorporates two variables
pertaining to the wife of the migrant worker: (a) her
amount of formal education, ranging from none to

collage graduate; (b) whether or not she has an

14

occupational career outside the home. These
interrelated variables consistently influence the
experiences and problems encountered by migrants'
families. ‘

Altough a large portion of Jordan's population,
especially in the urban centers, are dsecendents of migrants
from other countries. and hence do not reflect traditional
Jordanian culture, ethnic background was not taken as an
explanatory factor in this study. There were two reasons for
this. First, most of those descents of migrants were born in
Jordan, are fully integrated into Jordaian society, and
consider themselves to be Jordanians rather than ethnic
minorities. Second, the rural-urban distinction incorporatd
in the study takes account indirectly of the cultural
differences that still do exist between indigenous Jordaians

and descendents of migrants.

We):

The objective of this research was to examine labor
migration as a process of change kamong the families of
migrant workers. It seeks to provide a better understanding
of the forgotten or underestimated socioeconomic experiences
of labor migration for these families. This research may
also benefit those parties involved in labor migration
--including the migrant workers themselves, their families,
and national policy makers in the labor exporting

countries-- by emphasizing the social consequences which

15

must be considered in the evaluation of the costs and
benefits of out-labor migration in general.

Jordan provides a good setting for such a research
because of the fact that more than one third of its labor
force is workig abroad.

This dissertation is divided into four chapters.
Chapter one includes general background information, a
statement of the problem, expectations of the study, and
conceptual background about labor migration as a process of

change on the family, national and international levels.

Chapter two presents the methods used in the study. It
gives a detailed description of the sample, the procedures
used in collecting data, and the manner in which the data
were analyzed.

Chapter three presents the findings of the study.

Chapter four is discussion and conclusion. The first
part analyses the results of the study in regard to previous
studies and discusses the major patterns observed in this
research; the second part contains conclusion and policy

implication from the study.

16

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

WWW

Labor migration as a process is not new. One form of
ancient labor migration was taking laborers by force from
other nations, as slaves. This process was clearly evident
during colonial times, when colonial powers used to take the
manpower they needed (mainly as slaves) to work for their
capitalist economies. Another ancient form of labor
migration was voluntary-collective movement of workers with
their families to another land of perceived opportunities
where they settled permanently.

A new form of labor migration was initiated by the
industrial revolution in Europe. The expansion of
.industrialism created a need for more labor. Asia result,
waves of migrant workers moved into cities from the
surrounding rural areas. When that 'migration was not
sufficient, waves of international temporary migrants came,
especially to Germany. This latter migration provided the
needed labor without the economic or political costs
associated with a permanent work-force (Rhodes, 1978). Thus,
in one sense, modern labor migration is a movement of
workers from developing countries to core countries to
satisfy their needs for a less expensive labor-force for

their expanding industries. In another sense, modern labor

17

migration also functions as an "escape valve” in developing
countries that prevents uprising among their labor forces
caused by lack of opportunities.

World system theorists consider labor migration as a
process in which rural manpower is incorporated into the
capitalist production system on the national level. On the
international level, labor migration represents one element
among many in the growing structural linkage between regions
that play differential and unequal roles in the world
economy (Wallerstein, 1974).

Rempel (1976) has questioned the net value of benefits
derived by poor countries from the money remitted by their
citizens who have migrated to one of the rich countries for
employment. The adverse effects of receiving such
remittances included rural producers being turned into
strictly consumers, consequent reductions in the production
of food and exports crops, and inflation in rural areas
caused by the interaction of increased purchasing power (of
migrants' families) and inelastic supply condition.

Conventional economic theorists view the international
labor migration from poor to wealthy countries as a resource
flow. Like the trade of commodities, labor migration yields
benefits to the participation countries through numerous
mechanisms that operate at both the individual and
macro-structural levels (Griffin, 1976). Other theorists,

like Friedman, have gone further by conceiving of labor

18

migration as an ”equilibrium" process in which capital flows
from the rich and productive regions in an exchange for
labor from poor and cheap labor regions (Rhouds, 1978). This
theory assumes that this ”healthy” process will lead to the
development of rural and periphery regions through the
migrant workers who will carry back capital, new skills,
attitudes, and thoughts that are needed in their regions.
Thus labor migration presumably benefits both labor
importing and exporting countries. Labor importing countries
benefit from the needed cheap labor, while labor exporting
countries benefit from the flow of foreign exchange and the
reduction in unemployment. Migrant workers also benefit
themselves and their country because they become agents of
change in underdeveloped regions. Furthermore, the theory
assumes that returned migrants also apply the new skills
they acquired abroad to establish businesses, increase
investments, and expand farming; this would in turn increase
the local and national production of the labor exporting
1countries. In short, conventional economic theory views the
international labor migration as a "manna" from heaven for

the development of the underdeveloped and labor-rich

regions.
However, many experts in this field have argued that

modern history has proved that the theory of labor migration
as an equilibrium process is only a myth (Burki, 1984, and

Portes, 1978). According to Burki, it is not true that both

19

labor importing and exporting countries are benefiting
equally from labor migration in terms of development. In
fact, labor importing countries benefit much more through
cheap wages for the demanded skills without providing fringe
benefits that local labor force usually demand. On the other
hand, while labor exporting countries financially benefit
through the extra foreign cash, the may loose various skills
needed for local small development projects. Also, inlfation
will increase as a result of the increasing purchasing power
for the families of migrant workers.

1 For example, Wood and McCoy (1985) stated that sugar
cane cutters from the Caribbean migrate to Southern Florida
to gain the cash they needed to improve their farms as well
as to improve their standard of living. However, there is no
evidence of expanding agricultural output or productivity in
those Caribbean nations. In fact, the remittances undermined
the agricultural production, since the dependency on
remittances has created "remittance societies” in which
people with remittances remove land from production to
purchase real estate for speculative rather than productive
purposes. The land holdings purchased by people with
remittances remain uncultivated or are 'worked below their
capacity (Wood and McCoy, 198S). Thus small farm production
has declined as a result of the remittances. Beside
declining agricultural production, social relationship among

village people deteriorated because of the lack of

20

cooperation and concern about village affairs. Social roles
were also changed as women started to take over the
activities of their absent men in farming and running the
family affairs. In other cases, some returned migrant
workers were inclined to accept wages offered for local farm
work or even to work their own farms. These social changes
that resulted from remittances have led to an increasing
need for imported food stuffs to compensate for the shortage
in local agricultural production.

Shah (1985) stated that the Pakistani labor migration
to the Arab oil countries was managed through personal
(private) or public contracts. Seventy percent of the
Pakistani migrants are married. However, only 4 percent of
them have been allowed to take their wives with them. Sixty
percent of their remittances were spent on consumption of
food and clothing, while 22 percent were spent on real
estate, including housing. The dependency of both the
government and the rural people on the remittances from
workers abroad put the future of rural Pakistani people at
the mercy of the fluctuation in oil prices over which they
have no control.

Fergany (1982) reported that high wages in Saudi Arabia
led to a vast out-migration from Yemen which increased the
wages of unskilled Yemeni workers twelvefold in three years.
To meet the resulting shortage in skilled and unskilled

workers in Yemen, the government allowed children to work in

bet

21

public services. Nevertheless, 20 percent of all government
service jobs remained vacant. The government also reduced
the qualifications needed for specific jobs in order to fill
shortage in public services. At the same time, changes in
technology and the type of development occurring in Saudi
Arabia have created needs for specific kinds of high-skilled
workers that are not available in Yemen. This has reduced
the need for unskilled Yemeni workers. Added to this is new
competition caused by a flow of unskilled cheap labor from
Somalia and Sudan. These changes have caused a large drop in
the size of remittances to Yemen. The Yemen economy, (which
had become dependent on remittances as a source of income
for the nation) found it difficult to cope with the new
situation, since agricultural production had declined
because so many people were leaving their land to work
abroad, and no alternative economic base based on
remittances has been established. Furthermore, the remaining
farmers have converted their lands from food production to
cash crop production (which do not require large number of
workers). As a result, the largest portion of imports to
Yemen today is food stuffs and agricultural machines and
equipment. Compounding this situation is the free market
policy in Yemen which turned the country into an open market
for foreign goods.

Labor migration is not an economic equilibrium process

between labor importing and exporting countries since the

22

former countries receive most of the economic benefits while
the latter countries receive few such benefits. In fact,
recent studies have concluded that labor migration has
created or exacerbated problems that inhibited development
in labor exporting countries, including unemployment,
dependency on remittances, inflation, increasing imports,
and removing land from production. As a result, the
equilibrium theory has been reinterpreted from considering
labor migration to be of equal benefit to both labor
importing and exporting countries (capital in exchange for
labor) to a concern with how to make better use of
remittances (Griffith, 1985).
WIMP—19.111

The Arab world represents a major region for
international labor migration import and export. For
example, in 1975, there were about 4.2 million international
migrant Arab workers in the World. These migrants remitted
more than $2.3 million (0.8. dollars) to their families. The
largest part of that earlier Arab labor migration was from
North Africa to Europe. At that time, only 1.6 million Arab
workers were working in the Arab oil countries and their
accompanying families totaled another 1.5 million persons
(Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil, 1983). By 1980, however,
the number of Arab workers in the Arab oil countries has
jumped to 2.3 million. About 83 percent of them were from

three countries:Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan. Added to this

23

number were 1.1 million Asian workers located mainly in the
Arab oil countries.
The rise in world oil prices in the mid-1970s led to

more developmental projects in the Arab oil countries as a
result of the increasing cash. Saudi Arabia, for example,
in order to carry out its developmental plans, became highly
dependent on foreign skilled labor, and of course, on the
world prices of oil. As a result, even more migrant workers
were needed. The same can be applied to the other Arab oil
countries. Therefore, foreign workers now constituted about
two thirds of the labor-force and half of the population in
the Gulf states. Labor migration indeed created significant
changes in the structure of the population, in the
labor-force and employment, and in the general economy of
both Arab labor importing and exporting countries. As a
result, both sets of countries initiated new policies
regarding this wave of workers.
BWMW

For these countries, labor exportation is viewed as a
profitable economic activity. Many writers (El-Saket, 1983)
Shah, 1985; Wilch, 1988; Shalaledin, 1984; and Fergany,
1982) have discussed how the Jordanian, Pakistani, Egyptian,
Sudanese and Yemeni governments consider the flow of
remittances from their migrant workers to be a solution for
unemployment and an element in balancing their foreign trade

deficit. These governments usually seek to increase the

24

number of training institutions to meet the local and
foreign demands for skilled workers. As a result, as said
before, more than one-third of the Jordanian and seven
percent of the Egyptian labor-forces are presently working
abroad, mainly in the Arab oil countries and the Gulf
states. Remittances from Jordanian migrant workers to their
families account for one-third of the national foreign
exchange needed to balance the Jordanian foreign~ trade
deficit. For example, in 1982 the amount of remittances
through the banks in Jordan totaled more than $966 million
(U.8.) dollars. It also amounted to $10 billion (U.S.)
dollars through the Egyptian banks in 1987, and $1,056
million (U.8.) dollars through the Sudanese banks in that
same year.

In these labor exporting Arab countries, remittances
from migrant workers have been a very important source of
foreign exchange. In fact, these states have based their
future development plans on the remittances they expect to
receive, which are in turn tied to the stability of the
world market price of oil (Ibrahim, 1978). Since. 1978,
international migrant workers are known to have remitted a
total of $24 billion to their home countries (Burki, 1984).
According to many recent studies, the actual total of
remittances is much higher because these reported figures

are based only on statistics from the official banks in the

25

labor exporting countries. Most migrants use private agents
and friends to send their remittances home (El-Saket, 1983).

These figures give a clear picture of the importance of
labor migration for the labor-exporting countries and the
reason for their policies which encourage workers to work
abroad to generate needed foreign exchange.
W

After the rise in oil prices during the early 19703,
the Arab oil countries began to need more and more foreign
workers to construct roads, housing, and governmental
facilities, all of which demanded a large number of
professionals, engineers, and skilled and unskilled workers.
They also needed a substantial number of teachers and
university professors for their educational institutions.
Governments in the Arab oil countries also began to take a
more active role in providing free public health services.
This resulted in draining professionals from the labor
exporting countries (Owen, 1982).

Why have the Arab oil countries needed (and will
continue to need for many years to come) to import labor?
According to Ibrahim (1978), the following factors have
contributed to this need:

1. These countries are underpopulated.

2. Their social norms bar women from working as employees.

26

3. Their population structure has (a) an inflated
demographic base of underage children, and (b) a large
number of nomads who are less deployed in the
labor-force.

The Arab oil governments did not allow this movement of
foreign workers to be uncontrolled. Citizens in the Arab oil
countries realized that, in the long run, increasing the
number of foreigners who have more education and more skills
will undoubtedly change their demographic structures,
especially if migrant workers and their families become
citizens and began consuming the national wealth. If that
trend continues, native Kuwaities, for example, will be less
than 30 percent of the total population of that country in
the year 2000 (Ibrahim, 1978). In the face of this large
influx of Arab migrant workers, and due to recent events in
some Arab oil countries, governments in these states have
adopted specific policies as precaution against any possible
”demographic" threat.

According to Burki (1984), Kuwait in 1986 took the
following safety measures.

1. Since the Arab migrant workers pose more of a threat
than other migrant workers, demand higher wages, and
are often accompanied by their families who need more
services, new migrant workers are to be imported from

non-Arab countries.

27

2. The number of visiting visas was reduced by 93 percent
from the previous year.

3. The number of working visas was reduced by 7 percent
for the same period.

Governments in the other Gulf countries have also
enacted many laws against foreign workers. These laws can be
summarized as follows (Owen, 1982):

1. Migrant contracts are limited by place of work (to only
the contracting business) and in time (five years at the
maximum, but renewable). Only persons who earn above a
certain salary or are employed in particular technical or
professional occupations (such as engineers, doctors and
universiy professors) are allowed to bring their families.
No migrant is allowed to marry a native woman. Recently,
native men have also been prohibited from marrying foreign
women, since this practice was leaving many native women
without marriage partners in societies in which all women
are expected to be married.

2. Foreigners are prevented from owning property in the host
country, and they are also not eligible for subsidized
housing. As a result, 58 percent of the local expenditure by
migrants working in Kuwait go for rent (Owen, 1982).
Consequently, many migrant workers are forced to leave their
families at home, even if they are permitted to bring them

to the host country.

28

3. There are also problems connected with access to free
medical care and education, which forces foreigners to pay
for private health care and education. Foreigners usually
find it difficult or impossible to be admitted to
universities to study engineering, medicine or any other
subject that would lead to professional jobs in the oil
countries. This forces the children of migrant workers to
return to their home countries for education (owen, 1982).
All of the Arab oil countries have started to take
similar safety measures. For example, new projects have been
largely given to Korean companies, who bring their own
workers and put them in camps. When the project is over, the
company leaves the country with all of its workers. Thus,
while the Arab migrant workers were 65 percent of the' total
migrant workers in the Arab oil countries in 1975, they were
only 48 percent in 1984 (Serageldin et al., 1984). Most -of
the restrictions on migrant workers are directed mainly
against Arab workers. The reason for such actions, as
Choucri (1983) outlined, is that ”both politics and markets
played a role in the new interregional flow of the Asian
workers and the restrictions on Arabs. The Arab oil
countries needed to tap new sources to meet the apparently
unstable demand for labor. Asians would accept the working
conditions that Arabs would refuse. They appeared better
disciplined and more productive. In addition, Asians had a

distinct political advantage. The Arab oil countries worried

29

less about Asian workers making claims for citizenship. They
are alien and could remain disenfranchised. The Asians were
regarded as more likely to be passive observers of political
processes than potential activists or claimants on social
services and other benefits. Added to all of this is the
increasing threat of some Islamic fundamentalist movements.
Some of these movements are responsible for many recent
anti-government activities in some Arab oil countries. As a
result, most Arab oil countries, especially Kwait, sharply
reduced the number of Arab migrant workers while, at the
same time, the number of non-Arab workers increased rapidly.

From the above overview of policies in both labor
exporting and labor importing countries, it seems reasonable
to conclude that the policies which the Arab oil governments
adopted against migrant workers have not been matched by
suitable policies in the labor exporting countries that
could protect workers (Owen, 1982). The only policy by those
latter countries has been to export more and more people to
the Arab oil countries. The impact of those policies on the
migrants' families will be the subject of discussion in the

next section.

Wire.

0'; e ' .. o .00 I o . e, 0' .00 Hoe '0 ‘0
Labor migration in the Arab world has had many profound

social consequences for the labor importing countries. For

30

example, with more than one half of the population in the
Gulf oil states being migrant workers with their families, a
new privileged class has arisen among native citizens in
most of these states (Saad-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil, 1983).
This new class is characterized by high income, many assets,
and a luxurious lifestyle, while the imported migrants do
the proletariat jobs that are characterized by far less
income , very low status in terms of jobs and housing, and
other forms of social isolation. This isolation has been
built into every institution created to deal with migrant
workers and their families (Kenfer and Miller, 1985). This
treatment applies to Arab and non-Arab migrants alike. If a
comparison is made between the treatment of Arab migrants in
Europe and in the Arab oil countries, these workers have
better living conditions in Europe (Saad-El-Deen and
Abd-El-Fadeil, 1983). Thus, labor migration has created a
new way of life and standard of living for both migrant
workers and native citizens based entirely on the passport
that one carries.

Owen (1982) and Sivanandan (1979) have observed that
these policies are having a devastating effect on
orientations toward work in the labor importing societies.
For example, Kuwaities, who for thousands of years have
lived on fishing have lost this tradition. Fishing is no
longer accessible to the people. Fishing rights are reserved

for few elites who own fishing companies. Ninety percent of

31

the Kuwaities work in offices where they receive a full
salary for working an average of four hours per week. All
technical jobs are left for foreigners.
WWW
Families of migrants usually have two options, either
to separate from their household head, or to live in social
isolation within the host country. Either of those options
could undoubtedly affect the life of a migrant's family.
According to Burki (1984), it is possible to estimate
the economic benefits and costs of labor migration with some
precision and to come to the conclusion that the economic
benefits have generally outweighed the economic costs.
However, such a calculation is very difficult to make in
regard to noneconomic costs and benefits. Burki (1984) said
that to study the full socioeconomic impacts of labor
migration at the micro level, reasonably firm information
should be available on the number of people involved; their
social, economic and cultural backgrounds; the amount of
remittances sent by them to their families; and the use of
the remittances by household heads. On the basis of such
information, it should be possible to determine accurately
not only the immediate impacts of migration, but also its
long term social and economic consequences. At the present
time however, such information is generally lacking. So far,

most of the research on the impacts of labor migration on

32

the labor exporting countries has focused entirely on
economic impacts.

While the economic impacts can be measured in monetary
terms, the nature and extent of the social impacts of labor
migration on migrants' families vary from one place to
another and from one family to another, depending on such
factors as education, the social structure of a given
family, and the social norms in a given society. The variety
of these social impacts are virtually unlimited. They
include several changes in the social relations within
families, among groups, between generations etc. Serageldin
et al., (1984) indicated in his study that labor migration
would produce a very different reaction from a Yemeni of
rural origin for who in exposure to the lifestyle of Riyadh
or Jidda is the initial contact with ”a big city," as
compared with a Lebanese, Egyptian, or Jordanian
professional who would likely find the lifestyle in Saudi
Arabia confining and dull in contrast to Beirut, Cairo, or
Amman.

A complete analysis of the social impacts of labor
migration should certainly include women. They are expected
to carry out many duties that are very different from their
husbands' responsibilities for farming, family decision
making etc. The wives of migrant workers undoubtedly suffer

the most from migration. Yet this subject has been

33

underestimated in most of the studies done on labor
migration (Burki, 1984).

There is a disagreement among different researchers
about the new role of women after migration. Ibrahim (1978)
hypothesized that labor migration could lead ultimately to a
new social order and to "feminizing" the families of migrant
workers in the labor exporting countries and "masculinizing"
the flow of migrant workers to the labor receiving
countries. Labor migration consisting of mostly men could
lead also to a serious imbalance in the sex ratios in both
sets of countries, which could produce serious problems in
Arab societies in which every adult is expected to be
married.

-Serageldin et a1. (1984) agreed with Ibrahim on this
point, pointing out that the wives .of migrants must
undertake much more work than traditionally done by women in
Arab societies. These women have to assume many roles of the
household head, including house keepers, protector, and
disciplinarian of the children. As a result, these women's
control over household resources has dramatically increased,
which in turn alters many aspects of their family role. He
also suspected that those role changes may not survive after
the return of the husband, which would create further
problems for women in Arab societies.

Burki (1984) based his comments on the experience of

Pakistanians, saying that on one hand, the women have more

34

problems when they stay in the home country. They are left
without a "protector" against interference by the extended
family, who traditionally may act as protector for the
family of a migrant household head. On the other hand, he
also suggested that in some cases the women were able to
make effective use of the remittances sent by their husbands
to establish businesses and to buy vans to transport the
surplus produce from village to market town. In addition, he
suggested that migrants' children were deriving benefits
from the significant increase in household income that has
resulted from the flow of remittances. A part from being
better clothed and better fed, they are also receiving much
better education when compared with the children from
non-migrant household. One interesting consequence of the
decision to denationalize education in Pakistan is that
private schools have been set up in large numbers in the
areas with high concentrations of migrant families. These
schools usually provide better education than government
institutions, they have higher enrollment rates, and the
quality of their teaching is superior. Burki concluded that
if these speculations about the possible benefits for women
in migrants families are true, then these should be an
additional secondary impact on the education of female
children. If remittances sent by migrant workers are turning
some of their wives into economic entrepreneurs, then these

liberated women should be able to provide better education

3S

and better social opportunities for their female children
than they had themselves. In a society that places a very
low priority on female education, such a change should
produce some very desirable results.

Many writers (such as Grifith, 1985) argue however,
that such changes in women's control over household
resources will not change their status in the bottom of the
status hierarchy. According to Saad-El-Deen and
Abd-El-Fadeil (1983), "in contrast to what had been believed
in labor exporting countries that migration would lead to an
improvement in wellbeing among migrants' families, there is
a recent feeling that this is not at all for good. There are
negative socioeconomic effects in addition to the positive
effects that have been focused on previously. Moreover, it
is doubtful if the social effects are beneficial, since they
are difficult to evaluate. The principal negative effect is
caused by the separation of the household head from his
family. Most of the migrant males are between 24 and 40
years old, and they are often prevented from bringing their
families with them. This means that a large number of
families are separated for either a short or a long time,
and that many women are forced to take on more
responsibilities for managing their families.

A study done on the wives of Lebanese migrants (Azzam
and Sharib, 1980) showed that many women do not share the

attitude expected by most writers of welcoming migration

36

because it gives more freedom. More than 75 percent of women
in that study preferred to stay home even if the family
income would be 25 percent less. That study also showed that
15 percent of interviewees acknowledged that the marriage
bonds had been weakened by migration. They complained about
the increase in their responsibilities for children's
discipline and fewer opportunities for social interaction
after their husband's migration. There was a clear
indication that in most cases (63 percent) the decision to
migrate was initiated by the husband, despite objections by
their wives in 34 percent of the cases. In only 4 percent of
the cases, the desire for migration originated from the
wife. Saad-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil (1983) also showed that
in Sudan a large percentage of divorces (40 percent) were
due to the migration of husbands.

Regarding Burki's hypothesis that migration would lead
to more educational opportunities for migrants' children,
Saad-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil (1983) showed that the
opposite was true. Based on interviews with principals of
elementary and Junior-middle schools in Sudan, this study
found large differences in levels of school achievements as
well as disciplinary problems between the children of
migrants and those whose father stayed home. Saad-El-Deen
and Abd-El-Fadeil also showed that social service
researchers in Yemen began to pay more attention to the

increase in the number of children in rural areas whose

37

fathers were abroad. There was often no way for the mothers
of these children to discipline them. Children began to take
the father's role at a young age, and also begin smoking and
taking drugs (alqat). -

The following section presents background information
relevant to the socioeconomic impacts of labor migration on

migrants' families in Jordan.

 

W

W

Jordan is a Middle Eastern country with a population of
about three million. Agriculture used to be the main
economic base before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank
in 1967 war. After that, exporting skilled labor became the
major export.

Jordan's recent history has been shaped by the
Palestinian problem. After the 1948 and 1967 wars, its
population increased ten times, from about 300,000 in 1947
to 2.75 million by the mid-19703. It is the only country in
the Middle East in which more than half the population
consists of refugees (Zaghal 1984). With its limited
resources, however, Jordan has not been able to absorb all
the potential Palestinian refugees. Consequently, since the

late 1940, Palestinians have been migrating to the Arab oil

38

countries to work as professionals and technicians. For a
long time, the number of these workers needed by these
countries was quite limited. As world oil prices increased
rapidly during and after the 1973 war, however, there was
more need for construction workers and engineers to meet the
sudden boom in construction in the Arab oil countries.

The Jordanian government came to appreciate the
importance of remittances as a solution for unemployment and
as a means of balancing its foreign trade deficit. The
Jordanian government therefore decided to increase the
number of training institutions in the country to meet the
growing foreign (as well as domestic) demand for skilled
workers. The number of professional institutions was
increased more than three times between the late 1960s and
1982 (Simantee, 1985). This Jordanian labor migration to the
Arab oil countries has had many similarities to the labor
migration from some Asian and many other Middle Eastern
countries (for which labor migration alsO' became an
important source of income and was enhanced by the
governmental policies to train workers and establish annual
contracts with the labor importing countries). Jordanian
workers were in especially high demand, however, because of
their relatively high levels of education which qualified
them for highly skilled white and blue collar jobs.

The Jordanian labor force in the Gulf is characterized

by quite high levels of education with 40 percent being

39

college graduates and 25 percent being secondary-school
graduates. If we compare those figures to the total labor
force in Jordan -- of which 57 percent have less than a
secondary education, 24 percent have secondary education,
and only 18 percent are college graduates -- we find that
that out migrant workers have a higher level of education
(Ibrahim, 1986).

It is estimated that approximately 10,000 workers have
migrated from Jordan every year since 1974. This trend
continued until the mid 1980s (Abdal-Jabbar, 1982). By 1982,
more than 40 percent of the Jordanian work-force was abroad,
working.mainly in the Gulf area. More than 30 percent of the
Jordanian national income comes from remittances. For
example, the amount of remittances through the banks of
Jordan totaled more than 966 million (0.8. dollars) in 1982
(Ibrahim, 1986).

While Jordan is one of the major Arab labor exporting
countries, it is the only Arab state beside Yemen that
exports and imports workers at the same time. It exports its
highly educated and skilled workers, who are highly demanded
in the Arab oil countries, and imports sbstitute cheaper
labor, maainly from Egypt. This is a very clear example of
dealing with labor migration as "human capital” which is a
very widespread phenomenon in many Third World countries.
The basic reason for this policy is the need for foreign

exchange and the high rate of unemployment among highly

4O

skilled persons. Thus, the number of Jordanian workers
abroad increased from 1973 to 1985 as follows. (Compiled
from estimation by Serageldin et al. 1984; Ibrahim, 1986;
Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil, 1983; and population
Report, 1983):

M19531.

1973 125,000
1975 139,000
1976 170,000
1980 261,500
1982 350,000
1985 382,500

On the average, these numbers equaled one-fourth of the
total Jordanian labor force until 1976, and represent 40
percent of the total since 1980. This large migration opened
up many jobs in Jordanian cities and provoked considerabe
rural-to-urban migration to fill them, In addition, workers
from outside the country came to fill the vacant rural jobs
created by the rural-urban migration and the new jobs in
service sectors created by the remittances flowing into the
country (Population Report, 1983). A good example of this is
the increase in the estimated number of work permits for
foreign workers issued by the Jordanian Ministry of Labor
between 1973 and 1986. (Compiled from Ibrahim (1986) and
Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil, 1983):

41

Year LEermit

1973 376
1975 5,000
1980 80,700
1984 135,000
1985 155,000
1986 149,000

These data show that the number of migrant workers
coming into Jordan increased dramatically as a result of the
severe shortage in the national labor-force.

However, the recent Iran-Iraq war and the continual
decline in world oil prices has resulted in a severe drop in
the number of the Jordanian workers abroad and the amount of
remittances they send home. At the same time, the number of
applicants for jobs in Jordan increased greatly, rising by
95 percent between 1973 and 1983.

In 1985, the steady growth in remittances began to
decline for the first time (Ibrahim, 1986). Returning
migrant workers who face the depression and unemployment in
Jordan may end up joining the growing radical movement that
exists here as well as all other labor-exporting countries
(Kinfer, 1985). According to CBS News, the civil riot in the
West Bank erupted at the peak of unemployment among college
graduates as a result of the growing shortage of migration

opportunities to the Arab oil countries (CBS Jan. 7, 1988).

42

The Jordanian government therefore worked out with the
Arab oil countries an agreement to limit the number of
returning migrants. In addition, in 1986 the government
imposed new fees on foreign in-migrating workers. While this
research was taking place in Jordan, the government
increased those fees more than three times, especially on
non-Arab migrants. This fee is largely a response to the
lack of foreign exchange flowing out of the country as wages
for foreign workers. Foreign workers in Jordan prefer to be
paid in 0.8. dollars. Therefore, the government decided to:
1. Impose an anuual fee of about 8350 on each imported
Arab worker and about 8800 on each imported non—Arab
worker, to be paid by employers
2. Cancel most imports, especially those of durable goods.
3. Temporary close all money exchange offices except
banks.

As this overview indicates, migrants became a
convenient source of income both for the government and the
migrants' families.

,- : ...“ . ,,_,, , -; . -.. , . - ., .. . .-. .,
mm
Secombe (1980) argued that Jordan had put itself at the
mercy of oil prices fluctuations over which it has no
control. In his study, Secombe showed that remittances
increased between 1971-1979 from 22.8 million to 156.4

million Jordanian Dinars. But this had led to drastic

43

effects on the economy, since its trade deficit increased
from 95 million Jordanian Dinar to 450 million Jordanian
Dinars during the same period. This reflects a 443.6 percent
increase in the value of domestic imports compared to a
growth in total exports of only 62 percent. Consumer goods
are currently the) fastest growing component of the import
bill. Secombe concluded that ”while remittances have covered
an otherwise large trade deficit, it is these very
remittances which have exaggerated the trade deficit by
facilitating the imports boom. The migration of professional
and skilled workers has assumed new dimensions at a time
when Jordan's own need for technicians and skilled personnel
has intensified owing to the growing requirements of the
variance in economic sectors (Secombe, 1980).

Secombe also noted that the labor migration movement
out of Jordan has negatively affected the rural areas, where
agricultural production has declined due to the shortage in
labor force, and because returned migrant workers prefer to
live in cities and not to expand their farms or buy new
ones.

El-Saket (1983) and Al-Fanik (1988), however, hold the
position that remittances supply the country with foreign
exchange and eliminate the unemployment problem. Al-Fanik
said that "there was always an extra labor force (about 25

percent). And this extra labor force was caused by the

44

continuing migration from the West Bank. For this reason,

Jordan Cannot live without labor migration."

El-Saket was interested in discovering how these

remittances had been spent, by whom, and on what. His 1983

study reported these major results:

1.

While most returned migrant reported that some of their
wages went for savings and investments abroad, the
proportion saved was not great.

The only investment of remittances reported with any
notable level was for residential land and buildings.
Although migrants' families earned extra money as the
result of remittances, this was accompanied by another
serious problem. The migrants' families became totally
dependent on remittances. El-Saket wrote that "the
outstanding sour note from the perspective of Jordanian
development is the discouraging picture of direct
investments or saving of remittances reported by
respondents."

While the migrants' families have considerably improved
their standard of living, it seems that their economic
development (expanding farms or investments) did not
improve. Thus for rural and urban migrants' families,
remittances have made very limited contributions to
their economic development.

El-Saket concluded that a crucial underlying fact was

that the majority of returned migrants at all socioeconomic

45

levels held the opinion that migration led to neither new
skills nor better jobs. He also concluded that investments
compete with many other things on families' lists of
priorities because of their limited financial resources.
When investments take place, it is reportedly more likely to
be tangible assets or small businesses rather than shares or
bonds for larger enterprises. El-Saket showed that
"villagers were the only sector who invested a high
percentage of their earning inside the country with 50
percent of their income going into investments. But these
investments were still mostly in real estate.

The high percentage of investments by villagers can be
explained by the findings of Castells (1982) in Latin
America cities, in which he found that people living as
squatters in cities were able to save money despite their
very low income. Those people were able to manage their
lives primarily through the informal sector by raising
animals and some food in their own gardens. In Jordan,
villagers are the most likely to manage their lives through
the informal sector, so they are the most able to save even
though they have very small earnings in comparison with
urban professionals. Nevertheless, their investments were
not used productively. Secombe (1980) showed that the Jordan
valley lost 60 percent of its people between 1970 and 1980.
These people used their remittances to buy land and to build

houses in urban areas, which inflamed residential costs,

46

enhanced the over-urbanization problem, deteriorated the
economy, and pressured city services.(This was a typical
case of the urbanization problems that Castells [1982) had
observed in Latin America).

These findings show that Jordanian labor migration has
created many serious changes at all levels of life in the
society. It is understandable that these changes would
affect the social structure of migrants' families, and in
turn the society as a whole. The last section of this
literature review discusses the social impacts of labor
migration on migrants' families in Jordan.
W

Jordan is part of the Arab world, where people are
strongly influenced by Islam and traditional tribal customs.
In Jordan and other Arab states, large internal migrations
from rural to urban areas have brought rural norms to
cities, where the norms tend to prevail within the largely
unassimilated urban fringe areas. No clear differences are
found between urban, semi-rural or rural areas in women's
status, as has occurred with Western urbanization (Abu
Lughuod, 1962). The fertility rate is one of the highest in
the world at 3.3 (Zaghal, 1984; Al-Fanik, 1988). The number
of people living in villages is continuously decreasing due
to the active rural to urban migration (Zaghal, 1984).
According to the 1979 census 59 percent of the population
lived in cities at that time (Khamees, 1988).

47

At the beginning of this century, the city of Amman was
just a very small village of about one thousand migrants
from Southern Russia. Those people had settled Amman and
other small villages around it such as Wadi El-Sear,
Sweilieh, and Zarqa. The Ottoman government chose this land
in the Balqa mountains to settle those who left their land
after the Turks were defeated by the Russians. In the 19803,
all of those villages became part of the big metropolitan
area of Amman, with population of well over a million
people, which is about half of the population who live in
the entire East Bank.

The growth of Amman has been a result of the
deterioration of other older cities in Jordan. At the time
of Ottoman Empire, Jerusalem and Nablus were seats of
government in the west Bank. Both of these cities, together
with the villages around them were considered to be
independent economic units. In the east Bank, Sult (about
twenty miles northwest of Amman), and Karaq (about eighty
miles south of Amman) were also seats of government. They
and their surrounding villages were also viewed as were
having independent economies.

After the defeat of the Turks by the British in World
War I, King Abdalla (grandfather of King Hussein) chose
Amman as a capital for the new East Jordanian state. This

caused thousands of people to move from Sult and Karaq (then

48

the largest cities in the East Bank) to Amman, since
opportunities for acquiring wealth were better there.

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, roughly two million
people left what is now called Israel and went to Arab
states. One million of them settled in the remaining part of
Palestine in which came to be known as the West Bank. Many
others went to the East Bank to settle in Amman and
surrounding areas. The population of Amman grew from 40
thousand in the 1940s to 300,000 in the 1950s. Zarqa, a
community located within the metropolitan area of Amman,
grew from a few thousand to 100,000 during that same period.

After the 1967 War, another migration occurred. The
loss of the West Bank to israel led most of those who had
migrated first into the West Bank to make another migration
into the East Bank, and most of them settled in the
metropolitan area of Amman. Also, people living in the West
Bank's old cities (Jerusalem, Nablus, and Hebron) and their
surrounding villages began to experience a lack of economic
opportunities under the Israeli rule. Many of them chose to
migrate to the East Bank and many chose Amman as a place to
settle. By the 19803, the number of people living in Amman
and its metropolitan area reached one and a quarter million.
Because the largest proportion of those who live in large
cities like Amman and Zarqa are from Palestine --rural and
urban origin —-, these cities often are called refugee

4
cities (Khamees, 1988). The only city in the east Bank of

49

Jordan that remained largely a homogeneous unit with its
surrounding villages around was Irbid. Irbid and its
villages had followed the Damascus government at the time of
Turkish rule. However, there was no major migration from
Irbid to Amman after the establishment of East Bank Jordan
as a state at the beginning of this century (Khamees, 1988;
Zaghal, 1984)

The social norms that are observed in the city of Amman
differ according to the area of origin (being from
Palestinian or East Jordanian rural origin). The fact that
most of Amman population are refugees, means that the
Palestinian social norms are the ones that are prevalent
there.

The social norms that are observed in the Palestinian
rural areas are generally not the same as those observed in
the East Jordanian ones. The rural Palestinians depend
mostly on agriculture. Their social norms regarding women's
status and their relations with in-laws are similar to the
ones observed in many peasant societies around the world. In
the East-Jordanian rural areas, the prevailing social norms
have many similarities to the ones observed among the
Bedouin in Arabia.

Palestinian village norms assign a great deal of power
to the grandfather in the family. He has the ultimate power
over all affairs of. his extended family. The land was

traditionally under the control of the grandfather, and the

50

whole family worked in the field without hired laborers. The
grandfather, together with the grandmother, thus occupied a
very strong position.

However, among rural East Jordanian, the eldest son has
higher status than among Palestinian villagers. In the old
days when raiding was a common phenomenon between East
Jordanian tribes, the older people were dependent on their
youth for protection. The older generation asked for the
respect from the younger generation, more than ultimate
obedience. In recent years most of the villagers in the east
Bank work in military services as their primary source of
income (Zaghal, 1984).

Compared with other countries with approximately the
same per capita income, Jordan's 1975 level of female
participation in the labor force was the lowest, at 10.5
percent; in comparison, the rate in Tunis was 19.35 percent
and in Turkey it was 17 percent. Local customes and Islam do
not encourage the mixing of male and female in job
environment, especially in factories. As a result, the most
"socially” desirable jobs for women are teaching, sewing, or
other jobs where women are majority. Also, most of the women
work is in the nonagricultural sector (United Nations, ILO
Year Book of Labor Statistics, 1984). There is also a low
level of labor force participation among men over forty. It

is often the case that workers in the defense forces retire

51

around forty years of age. Some of these retired men seek
employment in Arab oil producing countries (Zaghal, 1984).

Manufacturing, which accounted for 35 percent of the
female work force in 1961, dropped to 10.2 percent in 1976.
It would seem that women are becoming increasingly
disenchanted with productive work and are turning to
services, such as secretaries, taylors, and saleswomen. The
low level of Jordanian female labor force participation is
highly associated with a spectrum of variables, the most
important of which are the cultural values, martial status,
level of education, high fertility, husbands's education,
and degree of urbanization (Mujahed, 1982).

However, with modern education (students are one-third
of the population) and with the strong urbanization movement
in the country, this once traditional society is becoming
more modern. Educational development in Jordan is equalizing
opportunities between sexes. In 1952, 25 percent of all
students were female. By 1981, that percentage had increased
to 46.3 percent. As enrollment has increased, there has been
a marked decrease in student dropout in all educational
cycles and in all social classes for both sexes. The
percentage of dropouts among students had declined to about
11 percent by 1980 (Zaghal, 1984). Families are determined
to put their children through a university. Education has

become the major route to a higher social status as well as

52

the door leading to the skills that are highly demanded both
locally and abroad (Day, 1986).

Although these, and many other changes, are taking
place in Jordan, traditional social norms are still observed
in rural as well as urban areas. The family is still
overwhelmingly important in the social organization of local
communities in the Middle East (Davis, 1977). Men are the
defenders of property and honour. Women should not act on
their own as defenders. Therefore, women are still dependent
on the men of their families for protection and
external-family relationships.

The family is headed by the husband. He is the decision
maker in all internal affairs. Wives usually participate in
most of the family's external affairs, but they may not
participate in all of the family's external affairs and
relations even if the husband is abroad or dead. Eldest sons
or the husband's father or brother may take over
responsibilities of the family's external affairs in that
case.

,< -. - U.- . -.. , . - .. .. . .-. -, —-u

The question that remains to be asked is "what effects
might labor migration have on the social norms in Jordan
described above, especially those relating to women. Davis
(1977) observed that:

One of the most interesting consequences of labor

migration, and also one of the least studied, is what
happens to the members of the family who remain. It is

53

not unreasonable to suppose that the suffering of the
migrant is matched by his family's. Moreover, the
accommodation which women make to the absence of their
men should be of particular interest in communities
which emphasize the protection of women and their
customary dependence of men (Davis, 1977).

As mentioned earlier, there has been very little
research on this aspect of labor migration and what has been
written is mostly a speculation based on what has been
observed in a few societies (Pakistan, Burki, 1984; Sudan
and Yemen, Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil, 1983). Some
writers believed that labor migration would lead to the
liberation of women and to increases in their levels of
education (Burki, 1984; and Ibrahim, 1978). Others believed
that this would lead to an increase in the rate of divorce
and lower levels of school achievement among children
(Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil, 1983; and Azzam, 1980)

Keely and El-Saket (1984) tend to agree with Ibrahim
and Burki that migration has liberated women and increased
the level of school achievement among migrants' children. In
their sample, migrants were better educated than the average
East-Banker. Among migrant workers 33 percent were
university graduates compared to 18 percent of the total
population, and only 11 percent were illiterate compared to
13 percent of the total East Bank population and 30 percent
of rural East-Bank people as reported in the 1979 census.

Keely and El-Saket asked respondents about decision

making in specific spheres of family life. Returned migrants

54

(mostly males) reported a modest increase in the role of
their wives as the main decision makers during their
absence. This increase was more notable in matters related
to care of family consumption and education, rather than
investment and savings.

Keely and El-Saket noted that ”these data do not point
to a precipitous change in roles and relationships within
the family system. Nevertheless, the change is potentially a
tidal change in its implications, and accompanies other
changes such as higher participation of women in education
and the labor force. In the male respondents' eyes, this is
a processs of two steps forward and one step back on the
migrant's return..Although responsibility, power and status
in a family cannot be put on and taken off like an overcoat,
the changes in women's roles are not necessarily going to
proceed on a smooth path."

Keely and El-Saket reported modest levels of problems
regarding children during the migrant's absence, with 19
percent of their respondents saying that there were problems
with both children's studies and behaviors. A significant
proportion of returned migrants (60 percent) reported
problems related to the separation of the husband, as well
as problems of a young wife with in-laws or relationships
with outsiders of relatives who is temporarily heading a
household. They reported that these rates varied among

socioeconomic strata, but did not show how. Keely and

55

El-Saket said that the price paid by the children whose
health, clothing and education were provided by their
' father's absence is not clear.

El-Saket (1983) suggested that future research on the
micro-level should give particular attention to household
structures. In addition, he also hypothesized that the age
of the wife might have both direct and indirect effects on
her behavior when her husband becomes a migrant worker.
Indirectly, young wives may be more likely to decide that
she and her children should live in the household of her
husband's parents. Directly, older wives should have more
control over resources and decision-making regardless of
whether they were living with in-laws or temporarily heading
their own household. In-depth anthropological research, he
said, could shed light on the effects of household structure
on attitudes and behaviors related to migration, and on the
impacts of migration on Jordanian households.

Although these previous studies have shed some light on
the consequences of labor migration at the micro-level, no
comprehensive research has been done to investigate these
social problems in depth. Nor have the previous studies made
clear what variables affect problems such as poor school
achievement and conflict between spouses and with in-laws.
The previous research has generally relied on a statistical
analysis at a general level, without in-depth analysis of

the contexts of these problems.

56

CHAPTER II

METHODOLOGY

We

The sample for this study was drawn from four social
strata in the Jordanian society: high income urban areas,
middle income urban areas, low income urban areas, and
villages. The reason for this division in the sample is the
fact that people in different strata have different concerns
and experiences, and, as a result, will act differently to a
given aspect of change such as labor migration.

The criteria used to define these areas were based on
the classifications established by the local government that
usually issues building construction permits. The shape,
size, distance between buildings, and even the materials for
new construction are defined in the permit, based mainly on
the area of the proposed new buildings.

For example, West Amman, including west Jabal
Al-Hussein, Al-Shmeasani and Jabal Amman, are considered
class First-A areas. Government official buildings and
foreign embassies are located on the main streets of these
areas. For new buildings, much greater space must be left
between neighbors than in other areas. They must also be set

back farther from main streets, to allow for gardens. No one

57

can buy less than 500 square meters. And new buildings must
be constructed of white stones.

The high urban strata in the study is located in West
Amman. Every residence there is surrounded by a garden and a
wall. The population density is fairly low (Zaghal, 1984).
The average income of the residents is about 81500 a month
(El-Saket, 1983). The monthly rent for a small apartment is
around $300. It is expected that anyone who chooses to live
there should have a large enough income to provide a
standard of living identical to others in the neighborhood.
As a place of origin, people who live in the area are mixed
from the old cities of the West and East Bank, including
Nablus, Jerusalem, Hebron, Sult, and Karaq.

The middle urban stratum includes sections of Amman
classified as Second-B or C areas. These areas are located
in the main downtown of Amman and in the East residential
areas of the city. The main streets in these areas are
classified as business and merchandise sectors. No space is
required between business buildings on main streets. Houses
are permitted to have much less space between buildings.
Streets in these areas are narrow and congested with cars
due to the absence of private garages. Only the side of the
house that focus the main streets is required to be built
from white stones, while the other sides may be built with
concrete. These main streets stretch to narrower streets in

which the houses are built mostly with concrete. The rent of

58

an apartment in these areas is about $150 a month. Those who
live here earn around 8600 a month. They are mostly
Palestinians from rural origins who earn enough to enable
them to live a reasonably comfortable life in Amman.

The low urban stratum consists of unclassified 0.N.
camps as well as the areas surrounding them. The land for
these camps was given by the government to the United
Nations which built thousands of small huts, one beside
other. The walls of the huts are built with cheap
construction blocks consisting of a large proportion of sand
and small stones and a little concrete. The roofs are made
from zinc sheets. Every refugee family was given one of
those huts free. No one is permitted to expand or build over
his residence, since the cheap material that the huts are
built from does not stand any additional construction.

The areas surrounding the camps have been illegally
built up, mostly by refugees. Because they are entirely
illegal, there are no standards to determine where streets
begin and end, or how much space should be left between
houses. Most of those houses contain only one or two rooms.
The average income for people living in these areas is
around 8240 a month. Zaghal (1984) reported that the
fertility rate in these places is high, and El-Saket (1983)
discovered that number of children per family in these

places is also high.

59

The final stratum in the study consists of rural
Jordanian villages. The primary sources of income in such
villages are from farm production and military service
(Zaghal, 1984, Keely and El-Saket 1984). The Jordanian army
comes mostly from East Jordanian villages, since these
people are the most loyal to the regime. People in the
Jordanian military service usually retire early (around
forty years of age, Zaghal 1984), and after retirement are
highly demanded as military trainers in the Arab Gulf
countries (Zaghal,1984).

One East Jordanian village was selected for this study.
Most of the families own their houses, which are surrounded
by their farms. The land that the house stands on is usually
inherited from the grandfather. The Islamic law says that
the land must be divided between all the children upon the
father's death with 1/8 of the land is supposed to be given
to the mother if she is still alive. However, the tribal
practice differs from the law. Females have been obliged to
write a statement at the time of their marriage that their
portion of the farm will be given to their brothers. This
practice is followed (against Islamic law) to prevent the
land from going out of the family through daughters'
marriages.

As a result of this practice, most of the villagers (on
the male side of families) own their land. This also implies

that most people hold about the same status position and

60

income, since the division of land is equal among all the
males of the family. However, after several generations of
such division, most plots of land become so small that the
family can no longer depend on it for their entire income
(Seconmbe, 1980). The result is that most literate villagers
who can find a career in the city leave the village. Those
who stay in the village use military service or driving a
taxi cab or truck as a second source of income. Those
villagers who have remained have usually built on their
plots of land. This is usually a one-big story structure
built with concrete.

Jordan, as a country, has a unique population
structure. With more than half of its population are
Palestantan, there is no social distinction between native
Jordanian and Palestanian. Both carry Jordanian passports
and can work in any official or unoffical jobs. They can
live in any residential area except the refugee camps where
the United Nation, who is in charge of housing, allows
Palestanian only to live in its camps. On the other hand,
Jordanian villages are not desirable places to live in for
Plaestanian due to the lack of employment opportunities.
Living together for more than fourty years, all forms of
interaction, especially marriage, business, and other
socioecnomic interests, it is relatively hard (and socially
undesirable for both people) to ask if someone is a

Palestanian or not. Added to all of this is the fact that

61

for the purpose of this study, such a distinction thought to

be relatively not important.

Sending

This. study investigated the families of Jordanian men
who were working abroad or had returned from such work
during the past three years. One hundred migrants' families
were interviewed; twenty five from each strata. Twenty
respondents were subsequently eliminated from the study.
During analysis, it was found that some respondents gave
contradictory data that were inconsistent from one question
to another concerning criticaal points in this research.

Seven cases from the village were eliminated when
inconsistencies appeared in responses to questions about
children school achievement and the management of the
family. Five of them said that their children had high
achievements in school, but three of them said later that
their school age daughter had married early and the other
two said that their school-age teenage son is intending to
marry, and that the women do not have enough experience to
face the responsibilities of the wedding parties in the
absence of the father. It is usually understood in Jordan
that those who marry early are usually those who may not
succeed in school, but there is no way to know the truth
from the interviewee's answers. Two other respondents said

that they accompanied their household head abroad but

62

responded to other questions later that their oldest son was
managing the family's financial affairs.

Three cases were eliminated from the low urban stratum.
They kept saying that they pray for the good life of the
king, even though none of the questions was asked about the
king. Frequently, they claimed that they had nothing to save
because of fears that their responses would be used for tax
collection. These inconsistent answers were revealed in the
analysis when the large remittances that such families
reported receiving were not associated with a reasonable
amount of saving or investment.

Five cases were eliminated from middle urban stratum.
Respondents first reported accompanying their husbands, but
later said that their in-laws were managing the financial
affairs of the family.

Five cases were eliminated from high urban stratum
because there was no way to determine the changes that
occurred as a result of migration. They first said that they
accompanied their husbands, and then they said that they
returned after spending a year or so in the host country.
However, there were no details in their answers to indicate
if changes in their children's school achievements, their
relationship with their husband, or their career status
happened during their stay with their husband or after they
returned home. Since there was considerable emphasis in the

study on differences between those who accompanied their

63

husbands and those who did not, the data collected from them
was considered invalid.

The final sample therefore consisted of twenty cases
from each high and middle urban strata, twenty-two cases
from the low urban stratum, and eighteen cases from the
village, for a total of 80.

The initial plan to select a random sample proved to be
totally not feasible because of recently initiated
government policies concerning the conduct of all field
studies. These new policies require that any researcher
doing a study that deals with people, especially families,
must present his proposal and any other related materials to
the government in order to obtain written approval. A long
set of procedures must be followed to obtain approval from
various government agencies, which can take many months
without any assurance that the permit will be granted. If
approval is obtained, the researcher is then required to
display a special identification card which says that he is
authorized by the government to collect specific data on a
given subject.

If this study had followed those new policies, a severe
bias would have been introduced into the data given by
families. Many families would be afraid to participate, or
would be hesitated to give accurate information, especially

about their financial condition. They would have thought

64

that this information would be used by the government for
tax collections.

Consequently, the interviews were conducted without
government permission to avoid any possible bias in the
data, as well as frequent refusals by families to
participate in the research. Specific steps were taken to
avoid any circumstances that might have resulted in police
interference. The first step in this process was to select
local community leaders, mainly shop owners, who could
identify (and sometimes guide the researcher to) families in
which the household head was married, had children and was
either currently working abroad or had returned from working
abroad during the past three years. Families who met those
criteria were contacted and asked Ito participate in the
study. Participation was entirely voluntary, and anyone who
refused was dropped from the sample. Within each stratum,
this selection process was followed until 25 interviewees
had been obtained in each stratum.

One major limitation in this research was that when a
family refused to participate, the researcher did not return
and insist on the interview, in order to avoid a possible
call for police. This may have created some bias in the
sample. Thus, the final data represent respondents who were
spontaneous in giving the needed information.

This sample cannot be considered random, and thus is

not representative of Jordanian society. This is a

65

purposeful sample that was specifically chosen to focus on
the families of migrant Jordanian workers. In addition to
being restricted to married workers with children, the
sample also excluded workers who left Jordan in the fifties
or sixties and did not return until the seventies or early
eighties, since they were not subject to the new migration
policies in the Arab oil countries against migrant workers
that were established in the mid-eighties. The purpose of
this sample is to provide insights concerning significant
socioeconomic consequences of labor migration among

different classes in the Jordanian society.

MW

Data for this study were gathered through face-to-face
interviews with families in the four selected strata.

4 These interviews were open-ended questions.
Nevertheless, the questions asked during the course of the
interviews were specific enough to allow judgements about
various consequences of labor migration. Those questions
covered the four broad topics mentioned in chapter I:

a. Sources of income, rate of spending and areas of

investment.

b. Household management.

c. Children's discipline.

d. Intra-family relationships.

66

The selected families were informed that they had been
selected for a ”university" study on the consequences of
labor migration on migrants' families. These families were
assured that their participation was essential for the
success of the research. They were also told that the
results of this research would be shared with them, so as to
reduce their suspicions about the purposes of the research.

The interviews were conducted with the migrants' wives
for those families whose head are in the host country, and
with the husbands and wives for those families who returned
from.migration. They were first asked to describe any
significant social changes in the family life that occurred
after the migration of their husbands. This broad question
gave the researcher numerous insights into specific changes
that migrants' families felt were important to them, without
any intervention from the researcher. The researcher then
asked some specific questions on particular issues that were
not covered in the wife's initial talk. The kinds of
questions that were asked in the interviews are given in
appendix A.

A female accompanied the researcher and asked the
questions whenever a wife was interviewed alone. (Local
customs do not permit a male to have personal contact with a
female alone unless she is a close relative.)

The original plan to tape-record the interviews could

not be used, since most respondents were very suspicious of

67

the tape recorder and refused to be interviewed on tape.
Hence, the interviews were all recorded by hand.

Documents and published materials were also used as
sources of information and support materials for the data
obtained from the interviews. Government documents and
statistics were used to show specific social trends in the
Jordanian population that are related to the migrants'
families, including average family income, school
attendance, standard of living, etc. They were also used to
check the validity of data obtained in the field survey
concerning labor migration, such as levels of education and

kinds of occupation of migrants.

W

The unit of analysis in this research is the family of
out migrant worker. The method of analysis was cross
examination of family experiences for all the sample cases.
For example, the present socioeconomic conditions of each
family were compared to their conditions before the
migration of the household head (as recalled by the
respondents themselves) to see what changes were perceived
by them and that were attributed to the migration. Also, the
socioeconomic changes (as perceived by migrants) were
compared between families who accompanied their household-

heads and those who did not.

68

The purpose of these comparisons was to examine the
impacts of the new migration policies, especially in the
Arab oil countries. These new policies determine which
migrant workers can or cannot bring their families into the
host country. All the variables that could affect the social
life of migrants' families were asked about during the
interview. -

There were also "intra-case" analysis, which examined
how different factors within each case affected each other
and lead to a specific outcome. For example, when the
respondent said that one of the children dropped out of
school, another analysis of the data was made to see if this
family had accompanied the household head or not; whether
the mother was educated or not; whether financial management
was by the father, mother, son, or in-laws. Merely making a
descriptive analysis which concluded that the percentage of
those who live in the low-urban stratum had more dropout
children than others would not have been sufficient to
explain a given change, especially on the family level. The
analyses were intended to explain the context of a specific
outcome to discover all the factors that led one child to
drop out while others had high achievement in school. This
holistic method of analysis is advocated by Castells (1974)
to understand an urban community.

After this "intra-case" analysis for every interviewee,

tables were constructed for every factor that was assumed to

69

have an effect on the family according to the expectations
of the study. As mentioned in the data collection section,
this is a purposeful sample, so that it is inappropriate to
use statistical tests to measure the significance of the
findings. Because of that, and since the sample size is very
small, the rule was followed of requiring a percentage
difference of at least 10 percent to be considered

substantively important.

70

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH FINDINGS

This chapter examines the most significant experiences
and problems reported by Jordanian families in conjunction
with labor migration. As mentioned previously, the principal
factors are examined to explain differences in experiences
among migrants' families: (1) whether or not the family
accompanied the migrant worker; (2) the residential location
(and hence socioeconomic status and rural-urban background)
of the family; and (3) the wife's level of education and
occupational career. Four sets of questions were examined,
dealing with the most important aspects of change as
perceived by those families: household economy, family
leadership, children discipline, and family unity. As
mentioned in Chapter 3, since the study uses a purposeful
rather than a random sample, it is inappropriate to use
statistical tests of significance with these findings.
Because of that and because the sample is very small, the
procedure followed throughout this analysis is to consider
only differences of 10 percent or larger as substantially

important.

71

WW1

The first, set of questions examined in this study
considers changes in saving patterns and investments by
families of migrants.

El-Saket (1983) showed that the percentage saved by the
migrants' families was usually not great; about 70 percent
of the families in his study saved less than 30 percent of
their remittances. Only village families were able to make
substantial savings; more than half of them saved more than
30 percent of their income. He also found that migrants'
families typically used the money obtained from remittances
to invest in real estate and merchandise, with very little
being invested in stocks.

Political, social and economic conditions have changed
since El-Saket's study was conducted, however, especially in
the Arab oil countries. Those countries have established new
policies which resulted in a sharp decline in the number of
in-migrant workers as well as a decline in the wages of the
remaining workers. On the other hand, as a result of
decreased amount of remittances, the rate of inflation has
also decreased in Jordan (Al-Fanik, 1988).

Presumably, those recent policy changes in Arab oil
countries and the decreased inflation in Jordan should have
led to higher levels of savings and new areas of investment

among migrants' families. The uncertainty of the future

72

should have encouraged migrants' families to save more. In
addition, decreased inflation should allow people to save
more. Uncertainty about the future should also have
encouraged people to invest in productive sectors of the
Jordan economy such as agriculture and stocks.

To examine these expectations concerning the effects of
the Arab oil countries' policies and the impact of reduced
inflation in Jordan, the topic of economic change has been
divided into several sub-questions. These effects are
examined by providing detailed information about savings
patterns in families that did and did not accompany the
household head, savings patterns in the different social
strata in the Jordanian society, and the ways in which
savings were invested.

Winn.“

I What differences exist between the saving patterns of
migrants' families who accompanied the household head and
those who stayed home? For three reasons, it was expected
that families who accompanied the household head would be
able to save more than those who did not: (a) the household
head would remain as the manager of the household's
financial affairs; (b) the family would not have the
expenses of two houses, one at home and another abroad; (c)
inflation has been lower in the Arab oil countries than in

Jordan.

73

Table 1 shows the percentage of the families in this
study who accompanied the head of the household and those
who did not, within each of the four strata of the sample.
Overall, in 38 percent of the cases the family accompanied
the household head, while 62‘ percent did not. The
proportions of accompanying families were considerably
higher in both the high urban (55 percent) and the middle
urban (50 percent) strata. In contrast, only a small
proportion of families from the low urban stratum (20
percent) accompanied the household head. The proportion of
accompanying families from the village (40 percent ) was
about average.

To determine the amounts and patterns of savings among
dependent families, the interviewees were asked to estimate
roughly the proportion of their remittances they saved. (See
Appendix A for the precise wording of the open—ended
questions). Table 2 shows the percent of families who
reported saving various proportions -of their remittances,
for the total sample and among accompanying and
non-accompanying families.

For ease of analysis, the proportions saved are also
grouped into two main categories: 30 percent or more of
remittances, and less than 30 percent. The basis for this
distinction is the observation -- derived from detailed
case- by-case analysis -- that most families who saved more

than 30 percent were actually making productive investments

74

TAEHJB 1

DIFFERENCES IN THE PERCENTAGE OF FAMILIES WHO ACCOMPANIED THE HOUSEHOLD
HEAD AND THOSE WHO DID NOT, FOR THE TOTAL SAMPLE AND BY STRATA

 

 

 

 

 

strata IAccompanying FamiliesINon-Accompanying FamiliesI N I .
All Respondents: 38% I 62% :75:
High Urban I 55: II 45: :76:
Middle Urban I so: I so: I—o:
Low Urban I 20: I so: :77:
Village E 40% i 60% i 18E

 

TABLE 2

PERCENTAGES OF FAMILIES REPORTING SAVING VARIOUS PROPORTIONS OF THEIR
REMITTANCES, FOR THE TOTAL SAMPLE AND FOR ACCOMPANYING AND

NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Savings ITotal SampleIAccompanying FamiliesINon-Accompanying Families
I I I

0-9% I 19% I I 13% I I 22% I I

I_____I I I I_____I I

10-19% I 12% I 50% I 17% I 54% I 11: I 48% I

I_____I l l I_____I I

20-29t I 19% I I 24‘ I I 15% I I

I_____J______I I L_____l I

30-39\ I 16% I I 23% I I 13% I I

I_____I I I I_____I I

40-49% I 12% I I 10: I I 13% I l

I I 50% I I 46% I I 52% I

50-59% I 13% I I 10\ I I 14% I I

I_____I I I I_____I I

60-69% I St I I 3% I I 6% I I

I _I I I I_____J I

70 or moretl 4% I I 0% I I 6% I I

____.| I I I_____I I

Total I 100% I 100% I 100% I

I I I I

N I 80 I 30 I 50 I

I I I I

 

75

(that generate extra monthly income) such as buying a taxi
cab that can be rented to a driver, a house for rent, or
land for future sale with a higher price. Most families who
saved less than that percentage were merely using their,
money to expand their homes or just save it.

The data in Table 2 show that 50 percent of the total
sample reported saving 30‘ percent or more of their
remittances and 50 percent saved less than that amount. This
percentage is higher than in El-Saket's (1983) study, in
which only 30 percent of the sample said they saved 30
percent or more of their remittances. The finding of higher
ratio of savings at the present time supports one of the
principal expectations of this study.

Table 2 also shows that slightly fewer accompanying
families (46 percent) saved at least 30 percent of their
remittances than did non-accompanying families (52 percent).
Although this is less than a 10-percent difference, it is
nevertheless very important because it is in the opposite
direction from the expectation of the study. Whereas it was
expected that accompanying families would be able to save
more than non-accompanying families, this clearly was not
the case.

A possible explanation for this unpredicted finding may
be that families who accompanied their household head had to
spend more in the host country for education and health care

than they would have in Jordan. Free public services are not

76

available for them in the host countries. This may have been
particularly critical for the village families, since in the
host countries they had to pay money for all daily living
expenses, whereas in Jordan they have many opportunities to
raise food and animals in their gardens.
W

What differences do exist in saving and .spending
patterns among migrants' families in the various strata of
Jordanian society? It was expected that professionals from
,the high urban stratum and villagers would be able to save
more than others, since professionals receive a high income
and villagers can draw upon the informal sector for everyday
expenses, while low urban people have to pay for everything.

The data in Table 3 show that the opposite of what was
expected happened for professionals in the high urban
stratum. Sixty percent of migrants' families from that
stratum were unable to save at least 30 percent of their
remittances. However, migrants' families from the village
and middle urban stratum were found to save more than those
from other strata, just as El-Saket (1983) found.

Table 4 compares the percentage of remittances saved by
those families that accompanied their household head with
those that did not by strata. These findings indicate that
the failure of families from the high urban stratum to save
much money occurred only among those who remained in their

home country. All accompanying migrants' families, except

77

TABLE 3

PERCENTAGE OF SAVINGS ACCORDING TO STRATA

Village

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Percentage I High Urbanl Middle Urbanl Low Urban I I
of Savings I I I I I
I I I I I
0-9\ I 25%| I 20%| I 18% I I 6% I I
I_____I I_____I I I I_____I I
10-l9t I 25%| 60‘ I 5% I 45‘ I 20% I 58\ I 6% I 39% I
I_____I I_____I I I I_____I I
20-29% I 10%| I 20%| I 20% I I 27%| I
I I I I I I I I I
30-39% I 15%| I 15%| I 4\ I I 27t| I
I I I_____I I I I_____I I
40-49% I 5% I I ZOtI I 15% I I 6% I I
I I 40% I I 55% I I 42% I I 61% I
50-59% I 15%| I 15%| I 5% I I l7tl I
I I I_____I I I I_____I I
60-69% I 5% I I 5% I I 9% I I 0% I I
I_____I I_____I I I L_____I I
70-79% I 0% I I 0% I I 9% I I 11%| I
L_____L_____L_____I_______L______L______L_____L_______I
Total I 100% I 100% I 100‘ I 100‘ I
I I I I I
TABLE 4

THE PERCENTAGE OF FAMILIES WITH SAVINGS GREATER OF 30 PERCENT OR MORE OF
REMITTANCES BY STRATA

 

 

 

 

strata IAccompanying Familiesluau-Accompanying FamiliesIAll FamiliesI
I I I I
High Urban I l I I
I 50% I 30% I 40‘ I
I I I I
Hiddle UrbanI I I I
I 50% I 60% I 55\ I
I I I I
Low Urban I I I I
I 50‘ I 40: I 42% I
I I I I
Village I I I I
I 34% I 73t l 61% I
I I I I

 

78

the villagers, saved a comparable proportion of their remittances. Fifty
percent of all those families except the villagers saved 30 percent or
more of their remittances. However, among families from high urban
stratum who did not accompany the household head, only 30 percent saved
that much, which was considerably lower than any other stratum. The
apparent explanation of this finding is that high urban families who
stayed home had to maintain high standards of living appropriate to
their area of residence.

Because non-accompanying families from the high urban
stratum kept their high style of living in their home
country (quality health care and education for children,
cloth, etc.), they apparently had no extra money for savings
or investments, One‘ of the interviewees in the high urban
stratum reported that she became bored with the social life
in the host country and returned to live in an apartment
that her husband had built in a high urban residential area
of Amman. While living there, she was too embarrassed to do
the laundry herself. Such jobs are usually carried out by
Sri Lankian servants in the surrounding area. As she spent
more and more of her remittances on such small things, she
found that the family could not save anything. She therefore
‘decided to return to live abroad with her husband.

Migrants' families from the high urban stratum also
suffered severe declines in their remittances after the
recent drop in oil prices compared to the 1970s' oil prices.

As a result, wages, especially for professionals, .were

79

sharply reduced. Some professionals returned to Jordan where
many of them worked in such low status jobs as taxi driver.
Many others remained abroad with a decreased salary because
of the lack of opportunities and the high level of
unemployment in Jordan. They preferred the decreased wages
in the host country than the low status jobs or unemployment
in Jordan.

Migrants' families from the middle urban stratum were
able to save far more than families from the high and low
urban areas. The apparent reason is that they had a greater
percentage of professional and highly literate household
heads than families from low urban stratum. Although
migrants from high urban stratum were nearly equal in
literacy to those from the middle urban stratum, their
standard of living was much higher. Migrants' families from
the middle urban stratum did not attempt to maintain such a
high standard of living, which allowed them to save more.

As was shown in Table 4, village migrants saved much
more when they left their families in the village. This was
probably because part of their food could be supplied by the
informal sector -- farms, gardens and domestic animals, and
becuase life expenses in the host country are much higher..
Case-by-case analyses also showed that many villagers and
low urban stratum women reported sewing their own clothes

and performing other domestic needs.

80

TABLE 5
AREAS OF INVESTMENTS FOR MIGRANTS' FAMILIES

Area of InvestmentsIThe Proportion of Families who Invested

Real Estate 64%

 

Banks 30%

 

Small retail storesl 15%
I

 

 

Taxi cabs for rent I 13%
I

Agriculture I 4%
I

Stocks I 0%
I

 

Note: The total number is more than 100%, since many families reported
more than one kind of investment.

81

W

On what new areas of investment were the families of
migrants spending their remittances? It was expected that,
due to the recent decline in remittances, investments in
small retail stores (which depend mostly on the presence of
foreign exchange for imported goods) would decrease in
profitability. More people, it was thought, would invest in
agriculture and in stocks. Construction of buildings to be
rented was still expected to be the leading investment.

To measure patterns of investment, both open and
specific questions were asked. The respondents were first
asked to state in general terms how they used the
remittances. They were then asked specific questions as to
whether they invested in rental housing, rental taxi cab,
land for future sale, small retail stores, bank accounts
with interest, stocks, or agriculture. Appendix A describes
those questions.

Table 5 shows that, as was expected, the percentage of
people who invested in small retail stores was not great (15
percent). As also anticipated, it shows that most people
still consider real estate a good investment (64 percent).
However, while investment in small retail stores decreased
(from 52 percent of the families in El-Saket's study to 15
percent in this study), agriculture and stocks did not

replace them. Contrary to expectations, bank accounts with

82

interest (30 percent) and taxi cabs (13 percent) apparently
replaced the small retail stores that were formerly
considered suitable investments.

Only 4 percent of the families reported investments in
agriculture. Even among villagers, only 12 percent of the
families reported investments on farm improvements.
Investments in stocks were not reported at all by migrants.

Case-by-case analyses showed that there were no
differences between strata regarding types of investment,
except for agriculture. Twelve percent of those living in
the village invested in agriculture, while only 0.7 percent
from the other strata did so. Gold was a form of saving, but
certainly not of investment for some wives in the low urban
stratum (9 percent) and the village (6 percent). Real
estate, banks, and taxi cabs were common investments among
families from all strata.

As many interviewees explained, migrants' families
chose to invest in buildings rather than in agriculture,
industry, or stocks because the public may lack the
knowledge on such opportunities. This perception contains
much of the truth. Jordan has a relatively small population
with very limited resources. New industries need a big
market which is not available in Jordan. To succeed, export
industries must be competitive with lower-priced industries
from South East Asia (Al-Fanik, 1988). Thus, on the family

or individual level, it has been more secure (and

83

potentially more profitable)to ,invest in rental buildings
than to invest in agriculture or stocks. Lebanese refugees
from the strife there, and Iraqi refugees from the Iran-Iraq
war, have increased the demand for rental housing in Jordan,
driven up rents, and so increased the profits from rental
housing. Moreover, ownership of a house represents social
status for the migrant, and marks him as successful.

‘ However, the situation has recently changed. The
initial Iincrease in the demand for rental housing,
especially during the prosperous period of labor migration
of the early eighties, lead many professionals and
businessmen to invest in huge housing projects. In the long
run, the number of apartments that had been built exceeds
the demand. Adding to that, the Iran-Iraq war has ended and
construction costs have increased, particularly because of
the recent drop in the value of the Jordanian currency. In
consequence, these types of investments have become
unprofitable, and metropolitan Amman is. packed up with
uncompleted building projects. It is a very common sight in
Amman and its metropolitan areas to find huge, fancy houses
and buildings containing twenty or more apartments standing
uncompleted or vacant. With Jordan's economy in such a
critical stage, it remains to be seen where people will

decide to invest next.

84

W

The second set of questions in this study examines
changes in the wife's role after the husband's migration.

It was expected that wives would play a larger role in
managing their household affairs after their husbands'
migration. Burki (1984), Ibrahim (1978) and Serageldin et
al. (1984), all emphasized that labor migration would change
the role that women play in managing the household affairs.
Although they recognized that in-laws could also play some
role (Burki, 1984; Keely and El-Saket, 1984), they did not
consider the role of eldest sons.

Open-ended questions asked wives about the way the
house was managed during the absence of the husband. Other
questions asked about the role that in-laws played during
the head's absence (Appendix A). Through inter-case
analysis, the consistency of the answers given during the
interview was examined.

The findings given in Table 6 show that for those
families who did not accompany the head of the household
(forty-eight cases), half the households were managed by
wives, while nearly a fourth of the households were managed
by eldest sons or in-laws. Youthfulness of the wife
explained why in-laws managed some households (as El-Saket
has hypothesized). Fifty percent of those wives who lived in

households managed by in-laws had young, preschool children.

85

TABLE 6

HOUSEHOLD MANAGERS AMONG NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES

 

 

 

 

House manager I Proportionl
Wives I 50% I
Eldest Sons I 27% I
In-laws I 23% I
Total E 100% E

 

86

However, the wives who lived under the management of eldest
sons were obviously old enough to manage their household
affairs, yet they chose (or were obliged) not to do so. The
following sub—questions consider those factors other than
age that influenced women's ability to manage their
households or to yield this role to others.
W

Does the wife's education affect her role after the
husband's migration? It was expected that more educated
wives would be more likely to manage their households.

Table 7 shows that 71 percent of the non-accompanying
wives did not have high school diploma, while 29 percent had
at least that amount of education.

More women who held at least a high school diploma were
in management of their households (71 percent) than those
women who completed no more than preparatory school (41
percent). Case-by-case analyses shows that in all of the
households managed by the eldest son, the mother had no more
than a preparatory school education. For such households,
the initial expectation was confirmed.

_Yet there were many wives with university (34 percent),
middle collage (25 percent), or high school education (29
percent) who were not in management of their households.
Case-by-case analysis showed that in-laws managed the

household in all these cases. While lack of education by the

87

TABLE 7

THE RELATION OF WIVES' EDUCATIONAL LEVEL TO HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT IN
FAMILIES WHO DID NOT ACCOMPANY THEIR HOUSEHOLD HEAD

IProportion of Wives who
Level of EducationIProportion OF the TotalIManaged Their Household
I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
University I 6% | | 66% I
I I I_________l
Middle Collage I 8% I 29% I 75% I 71%
I I I_________I
High school I 15% I I 71% I
I I I I
Preparatory I 42% I I 35% I
I I I ' l 41%
Elementary I 21% I 71% I 50% I
I I I I
None I 8% I I 50$ I
I | I I
Total/ 48 Cases I 100% I
I I

 

88

wife is sufficient to explain management by the oldest son,
it is not sufficient to explain management by in-laws.

Moreover, half of the women (50 percent) with elementary
or no education were in management of their household
affairs. Indeed, more women with elementary or no education
were in management of their household than women who had a
preparatory education (35 percent). Factors underlying these
results are considered below.

W

Does the career status of the wife affect the role she
takes after her husband's migration? It was expected that
wives pursuing careers would be more likely to be in
management of their household affairs.

In the interviews, the women were asked if they had a
career and, if so, to explain the nature of this career.
Table 8 shows the percentage of women who had careers as
government employees, teachers or secretaries, and the
proportion of those women who managed their household.

The data in Table 8 confirm the expectation. While only
50 percent of all non-accompanying wives managed their
household, 63 percent of those wives with careers were in
management of their household. However, to have such careers
as teacher, principal or secretary, one must have at least a
high school diploma.

For wives without a high school diploma, there are

other sources of economic independence such as sewing.

89

Information about such source of income was obtained from
questions concerning domestic work that the women did. This
analysis shows that all women who reported having sewing
machines - conventionally used as a source of income for
women with low income - were also found to be in management
of their household. This explain why many illiterate women
were nevertheless in management of their household.

However, not all wives with careers managed their
households. While 63 percent did, 37 percent did not (Table
9), those who did not live in households managed by their
in-laws. Advanced education, combined with pursuit of a
career, did not suffice to guarantee that the wife, rather
than her in-laws, would manage the household. Sub-question
2C addresses this explanatory gap.

W

Does the wife's "social background" (being from rural
or urban areas) affect the role she takes after her
husbands' migration? It was expected that women from urban
backgrounds would be more likely to manage their household,
while rural women would be more likely to be under the
management of in-laws.

Table l (in the previous section) shows that the
percentage of families who did not accompany their household
heads differed from one stratum to another. This number is
greatest in the low income stratum (l8), and least in the

high income stratum (9). The percentages of wives who

 

90

TABLE 8

PROPORTION OF NON-ACCOMPANYING WIVES WITH SERVICE SECTOR CAREERS WHO
MANAGED THEIR HOUSEHOLDS

 

Percentage of Wives who Managed their Household I50%I
Percentage of Wives with a Career I20%I

Percentage of Wives with Career who Managed their Households l63%|

TABLE 9

HOUSEHOLD MANAGERS AMONG NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES BY STRATA

 

 

 

 

45% 48%

lHousehold IHousehold IHousehold I

stratum IManaged by In-lawsIManaged by Son IManaged by Wife I
I I I I

High Urban I 10% I 10% I 80% I
I I I I

Middle Urbanl 50% I 20% I 30% |
I I l I

Low Urban 20% | 25% I 55% |
I I I

I I |

I I I

I

I
Village I 7%

I

 

91

managed their household, by the area of residence, are shown
in Table 9.

The data in Table 9 do not permit of a clear conclusion
about the effect of urbanization on the management of the
households. Comparing the percentage of wives who managed
their households in high urban stratum (80 percent) to those
in the villages (48 percent) seems to confirm the expected
result. It appears that women from the high urban stratum
had managed their household affairs than those in the
village.

However, wives from the middle urban stratum were very
unlikely (30 percent) to manage their own household. In a
majority of those cases (50 percent), management was held by
in-laws. In centrast, roughly the same proportion of wives
in the low urban stratum (55 percent) maintained management
of their household as in the village. When wives from the
low urban stratum were not in management, the management of
the household was equally likely to be by in-laws (20
percent) or by the son (25 percent). In the village, in
contrast, when the wife was not in management, the
management was almost always (45 percent) in the hands of
the eldest son.

The wives in the villages seemed to have far more
freedom in managing their household affairs than the women

in middle urban stratum.

NON-ACCOMPANYING WIVES'

stratumlUniversityIMid-collage

 

92

'RABLJB 10

EDUCATION ACCORDING TO THE AREA OF
RESIDENCE

. schoolIPreparatoryIElementaryINoneITotalI

 

 

 

 

Village
I

 

 

l
I I
I I l I l I I
High I 20% I 10% l 50‘ I 20% I 0% I 0% I I
Urban I - I l l I I I100% I
I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I l I
Middle I 10% I 20% I 20% I 50% I 0% I 0% I100% I
Urban I I I I I l I I
I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I
Low I 0% I 0% I 4% I 50‘ I 37% I 9% I100% I
Urban I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I
| I I I I I ' I I
I I I I I I I l
I 0% I 8% I 0% I 30% I 36% I 26%|100% I
I I I I I I
I I I I I_ _I

 

 

93

The results are even less certain if one tries to combine
the urban and rural results with other factors such as level
of education or career. The level of education does not help
in understanding why middle urban women were not in charge
of their household affairs. Table 10 shows that wives in
high urban stratum were generally better educated than women
in other strata, and that half of all women in the middle
urban stratum had at least a high school education. In
contrast, wives from the low urban urban. stratum and
villages were very poorly educated. Nevertheless, wives in
the latter two strata were more often managing their
households than middle urban women (as shown in Table 9).
Case-by-case analyses revealed that many of those who were
living under in-law management in the middle urban stratum
had a high school diploma. Indeed, some had middle collage
and even university education.

Case-by-case analysis of women from the low urban
stratum and the village showed that none of those with any
degree of economic independence (whether teachers or women
with private sources of income from sewing) lived under the
management of in-laws or eldest son. On the contrary, many
women from the middle urban stratum lived under the
management of in-laws in spite of having job careers.
Further analysis were carried out to. understand why this

tendency toward in-law management (which is a rural

94

convention) appears mostly in the middle urban stratum and,
to a lesser degree, in the low urban stratum.

Case-by-case analysis revealed that none of the women
in the high urban stratum had married a man with less than
her level of education. In the low urban and village strata,
however, some women with a_ high scool education married
less-educated men. In the middle urban stratum, meanwhile,
there were many cases in which a woman with a preparatory
education was married to a highly educated professional man.
This pattern suggests that education has social value for
both men and women in high urban stratum, while in other
strata, the bride or groom is often chosen according to
traditional norms through an arranged marriage. It seems
that traditional rural norms are practiced more in middle
and low urban strata. This may explain the high percentage
of cases where wives, in spite of having good jobs or
careers, were still under the management of in-laws in the
middle urban stratum.

The lack of middle urban women's ability to manage
their households can be best explaind by one of the
traditional, especially Marxist, sociological theories which
says that middle class people are more conservative than low
or high social classes (Bottmore,1956). They are attached to
religious, cultural, and traditional norms than other social
classes in societies where the system of social classes

exists.

95

Abu Lughuod (1962) and Zaghal (1984) found that, for
large rural-urban migration in the Arab world, the migrants
preserved the rural norms in the city, where the norms
tended to linger in largely unassimilated .urban fringe
areas. Abu Lughuod (1962) found no clear differences among
urban, semi-rural or rural areas with respect to women's
status in Arab countries, despite what one might expect from
the Western urbanization experience.

Still, if one takes the Jordanian village as a baseline
example of traditional norms, then it is incongruous that
‘wives in the middle urban stratum should. exercise less
household management than those in the village. A possible
explanation for this finding is that the social norms that
originally prevailed in the middle urban (and perhaps also
the low urban) areas are different from the social norms of
Jordanian villages. 2

Most of Amman's population originally came from
Palestinian towns and villages (Khamees, 1988). In the
Palestinian village, the husband's father .used to have
ultimate power over family members, including sons and
daughters-in-law. Sons worked and lived on their fathers'
farms, and were not wage earners. Even when the land was
lost in war and the people became refugees in other
countries, traditional norms still dominated the family way

of life and family relationships.

 

96

These norms continue to be observed more in the middle
urban than in the low urban areas of Amman (Table 9). This
‘could be due to the fact that in the middle urban areas, the
grandfather had frequently migrated in with enough capital
to continue to command respect, and hence continued
enforcing some of his old rules in his extended family. In
the 0.N. camps and lower urban areas, however, people live
in houses they have built themselves with 0.N. assistance.
The grandfather is no longer able to enforce his old rules.

In contrast, the norms in Jordanian villages are
originally nomadic (Bedouin). Sheep and camels used to be
the symbol of wealth. Sons grew up to be fighters. The
son's status was determined by his power to support and to
protect his family. Village sons still practice these norms,
especially in managing the family during the father's I
absence. Palestinian sons, on the contrary, live under the
leadership of the grandfather.

Wives in the high urban stratum seemed to have fewer
in-law problems than those living in ~the low and middle
urban strata. The people living in high urban areas are
mostly from the old urban centers of the East and West
Banks. Wives in these areas have a higher status and more
freedom in the management of their own families.

The degree of change in the role of wives in the middle
and low urban strata and in villages depends on the amount

of power or management wife had before the husband's

97

migration. That in turn depended upon the social norms that
,conditioned her actions in the family. If she was accustomed
to caring for more than a small household, she usually
continued to do that. If. old social norms were still a
controlling factor, then neither her education nor her
career were a sufficient counterweight, and in-laws would be
in management of the household. This in turn implies that
such women were in a weak position in society, since .women
find more protection when living with their husbands than
with their extended family, in a male-dominated society.
These cases illustrate that it is the original culture
or background of the husband and wife (and not only labor
migration) that largely controls the status of women during
the husband's migration. Women's conditions could become

worse if the old rural norms were still dominant.

W

The third set of questions in this study considers the
effects of the father's migration on the educational
achievement and the behavior of his children.

A particular concern of this section is to investigate
the effects of the father's migration on children who did
not accompany him. Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil (1983)

hypothesized that the separation of the household head from

98

TABLE 11

CHILD'S SCHOOL PERFORMANCE AND DROPOUT RATES

 

IAccompanying INon-Accompanying
IChildren (38%) IChildren (62%)l
I I

Increased performancel 72% 24%

Level of Dropout I 4%
I

l

I I

I 26%
I

99

the family, especially when the migration separates fathers
from children at a crucial time of child development, would
have a drastic effect on the children's discipline -- as

case studies in Sudan and Yemen have shown.

To understand the effect of a father's migration on
the children's discipline in Jordan, one needs information
about the level of achievement of both children who migrated
and of those who stayed home. The interviewees were asked
several separate questions. These included whether their
children's level of school achievement increased or
decreased with migration, if any children had dropped out of
school, if there were any incidents of fighting between the
children in the neighborhood or at school, and if there were
any-disciplinary problems (see Appendix A). Table 11 shows
the proportion of children whose school performance
increased, and the proportion who dropped out of school,

among accompanying and non-accompanying families.

Table 11 shows that the children who accompanied their
households head were much more likely to have an improved
level of achievement (72 percent) and were far less likely
to drop out of school (4 percent) than those who stayed
behind (24 percent with an excellent level of achievement
and 26 percent dropouts). In other words there is a strong

association between low achievement among school children

TABLE 12

100

MOTHERS' EDUCATION AND CHILDREN'S SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT AMONG

Mother's
Level of Education

NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES
I Children school Achievement

 

 

 

 

 

University I 33%
Middle collage I 50‘
High school I 80%
Preparatory I 12%
Elementary or Less i 8%

 

IRemainedI
IIncreasedIThe SameIDecreasedIDropped outITotalI

|_______.
34%
25%

41%

33%

I

I

I
I________.
I 20%

I

I

I

I

I

 

 

 

 

 

33% I 0%
25% I 0%
0% I 0%
6% I 41%
27% E 33%

 

I I
I100% I

I100% I

I100% I

I100% I

I100% I
l I

 

101

and absence of the father. Boys from father-absent homes may
be immature and do poorly in school (Biehler, 1976). This is
very applicable to the Arab father where Islam and social
norms gave the father the high degree of power over his wife
and children (Defleur,1976). Low achievement in school among
children who 'stayed home is certainly related to many
factors, which are considered under the following questions.
W

How does the level of the mothers' education affect the
behavior and level of school achievement of the children of
migrants? It was expected that children who have better
educated parents, especially mothers, would be more likely
to do better in school.

To answer this question, the interviewees in
non-accompanying families were asked about the level of the
mother's education (Appendix A). A comparison then was done
between the level of mother's education and the achievement
of the children.

Table 12 shows that among non-accompanying families,
children whose mothers had high school or middle—collage
education were more likely to improve their achievement in
school than were children whose mothers were university
graduates or had only preparatory or lesser levels of
education. This increase in school achievement was most
marked among children whose mothers had high school diplomas

(80 percent). Case-by-case analyses showed that the mothers

102

with high school diplomas stayed home without any career.
This enabled them to give more attention to the children's
education. Hothers with university or middle collage degrees
had jobs outside the home. In many cases, these mothers
reported that they paid for private teachers because the
father's absence and their increased responsibility did not
give them enough time to attend to the children's education.
Merely receiving a private education apparently did not
guarantee that the child would exel educationally. Without
the mother's attention, the level of achievement stayed the
same and sometimes became worse than before the father left.
Table 12 shows also that only children of mothers whose
education was preparatory or less dropped out of school. Not
only did the absence of the father lead to less achievement,
but the mothers' level of education was also an important
influence on this behavior. This can also be explaind by the
fact that a side from the income of parents, the family
influences the individual's chances of becoming educated
(Defluer, 1976). It is the societal structure and uequal
distribution of wealth and educational opportunities that
enables high class families to pay for quality education for
their children while others cannot.
Nevertheless, Table 12 also reveals that some of
mothers with. elementary, preparatory or no education had
children with steady levels of educational achievement, and

in some cases the level of achievement increased. This means

103

that the level of the mother's education was not the only
factor affecting the dropout rate from school. The other
reasons for this are the subjects of the second and the~
third sub-questions.
W

How do the responsibilities placed on children after
their father's migration affect their level of school
achievement and their behavior? It was expected that
children who had more responsibility for their family's
affairs during their father's absence would have less time
to concentrate on their education. In other words, children
carrying responsibility as a result of their fathers'
absence would interupt their education (Defleur, 1973).

To answer this question, the interviewees were asked to
describe the range of, responsibilities that their children
took on after their father's migration. They were not asked
directly if these responsibilities affected their education.
Through inter-case analyses, the relationships between the
children's discipline, their level of achievement, the rate
at which they dropped out of school, and the
responsibilities children took ‘on after their father's
migration were established.

Table 13 shows that in 70 percent of the cases in which
the children took responsibilities for household affairs
upon their father's migration, the children dropped out of

school. In some cases, the dropout rate was associated with

104

TABLE 13

CHANGES IN LEVEL OF ACHIEVEMENT FOR THOSE CHILDREN WHO TOOK HOUSEHOLD
RESPONSIBILITIES AMONG NON-ACCOMPANYING FAMILIES AND THOSE WHO DID NOT

I Level of Achievement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assumed lIncreasedISamelDecreasedIDropped outlTotall
Increased ResponsibilitiesI 0% I I 15%: 15% I 70% I 100%I
Few Responsibilities I 46% I‘SEiI 9% I 9% I100%-I
No Responsibilities 5 47% I_53_zI ox E 0% IRE—I

 

 

105

serious fighting with other children. None of these
interviewees reported that the achievement of their children
increased after taking on increased household
responsibilities. In contrast, among children who assumed a
few responsibilities (such as bringing households goods from
a near by store) and the children who did not assume any
responsibilities at all, about half of them showed an
increase in level of achievement. For children who assumed
no responsibilities, there were no reported cases of dropout
or decreased level of school achievement. For those who
assumed a few responsibilities, the percentage of dropout or
lower achievement was 18 percent.

In all cases in which the child assumed increased
household responsibilities, the mother's education was no
higher than preparatory, was often only elementary, and was
sometimes totally lacking. Those sons were put in charge
without anyone to discipline them, and, at the same time,
they had to discipline their younger brothers and sisters.

Still, case-by-case analysis showed that in many cases
eldest sons were managing the families' affairs but did not
drop out of school. The child's responsibilities at home are
not sufficient to explain low achievement and/or dropping
out. That topic is the subject of the third sub-question of

the study.

106

W

How does area of residence affect the level of school
achievement and the behavioral problems of children after
their father's migration? we have already seen that children
who accompanied their father would have fewer problems with
school achievement and be less likely to drop out of school
than those who remained home. For those who accompanied
their father, no differences in school performance or
dropouts were expected among the various strata in the
sample. For those who stayed home, it was expected the area
of residence would affect the child's level of achievement
after the father's migration, since their education would be
regarded as less important in the poor areas.

To answer this question, the rate of improved school
achievement and of school dropouts were related to the area
of residence, as shown in Tables 14 and 15.

Table 14 Ishows that in all four strata children who
accompanied their [fathers showed higher levels of school
achievement than those who stayed home. This advantage could
be due not only to the lower burden of responsibility for
the children who accompanied their fathers, but also to the
likelihood that more money was spent on private education in
the host countries, since free high education was not open
to migrants' families.

Among high urban families, case by case analysis showed

that many women with university degrees did not find

107

TABLE 14

THE PERCENTAGE OF CHILDREN WITH IMPROVED SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT AMONG THOSE
WHO ACCOMPANIED THEIR FATHERS AND THOSE WHO DID NOT

 

 

 

 

lPercentage of Improved lPercentage of Improved l
IAchievement in Accompanying IAchievement in I
Strata IChildren lNon-Accompanying Children I
I I I
High Urban l 75% l 38% I
I I |
Middle UrbanI 57% I 33% I
I I I
Low Urban I 75% I 22% I
I I I
Village I 71% I 20% I
I I |

 

TABLE 15

THE PERCENTAGE OF DROPOUT AMONG MIGRANTS' CHILDREN WHO ACCOMPANIED THEIR
FATHERS AND THOSE WHO DID NOT

lPercentage of Dropout in lPercentage of Dropout in I

 

 

 

 

Strata lAccompanying Children INon-Accompanying Childrenl
High Urban I 0% I 0% I
Middle UrbanI 10% I 10% I
Low Urban I 0% I 60% I
Village E 15% E 9% E

 

108

suitable jobs in the host country, and since they did not
work, they were more likely to give their attention to their
children's education. However, the data reported in the
first section (Table 1) shows that those children who were
permitted to accompany their fathers were mostly from high
and middle income urban strata. A large proportion of these
strata are well-paid, highly educated professionals who are
permitted and could afford to bring their families with them
(as was seen in Table 16). Consequently, it is likely that
migration has widened the education and income gaps between
the rich and the poor for generations to come. A
It should also be noted, however, that among
middle-level urban families children who accompanied their
fathers did not do as well in school as these from other
strata. There are no apparent reasons for this difference.
Case-by-case analysis showed that in these cases, only one
mother was employed, most of the mothers had high school
education, the fathers in most cases had university degrees,
the level of informal interaction with neighbors was low and
there were no apparent problems between father and mother.
Table 14 shows that, among nonraccompanying children,
the rates of improvement in school achievement were greater
among children from the high and middle urban strata (38 and
33 percent, respectively) than among children from low urban

stratum and the village (22 and 20 percent, respectively).

109

TEABIJB 16

HOUSEHOLD HEAD'S EDUCATION

Strata IUniversityIMid. collage IH. SchoolIPreparatoryIBlementaryI NoneI
_______| I I I I I

 

 

 

 

 

I

l I I I I I I

High l 50% I 10% I 35% I 5% I 0% I 0% I
Urban I | I I I I I
I I I I I I__I

I I I I I I I

Middle l 65% I 5% I 25% l 5% l 0% I 0% I
Urban I I I I l I I
I I I I I I_I

I I l | I I I

Low I 4% I 4% I 23% I 46% l 23% I 0% I
Urban I I I I I I I
I I I I I I__I

I I I I I I I

I I I I I I I
VillageI 6% I 11% I 17% I 60% I 6% I 0% I
I I I I I I

I I I I I I

 

110

The reason for this is probably that (as seen in Table 10),
the percentage of women who have at least a high school
education is much greater in the high and middle urban
strata than in the low urban stratum and the village. In all
four strata, nevertheless, the percentage of children who
improved their school performance was not high as among
those who accompanied their fathers. The primary reason for
this is likely the increase in mother's responsibilities
after the father's migration.

Table 15 shows that among accompanying families, the
only children who dropped out of school were from the
village (15 percent). The fathers in these cases had
preparatory education and mothers were illiterate. Among
non-accompanying families, the dropout rate for children is
extremely high in the low-income stratum (60 percent), but
was rather low or zero in the other three strata. This
dropout rate among low urban children is much higher than
the national level (about 11 percent according to the 1979
census and Zaghal, 1984). Of great significance is the
implication of this finding that the literacy level of
migrants' children from low urban stratum is undoubtedly
lower than other children in the area.

In many cases, children who dropped out of school
engaged in such negative behaviors as bloody fighting with

other children in the neighborhood, robbery, and drinking.

111

Those problem behaviors further increased the isolation of
those families from their neighbors.

Case-by-case analysis showed high rate of bloody
crimes, robbery and problem drinking among children who
dropped out in the low-urban stratum, but not in the
village. Even though in 45 percent of the village cases, the
eldest son managed the household, this phenomenon was not
interrelated in any way with such negative behavior as
robbery, drinking, or fighting.

The economic condition of the family in the low urban
stratum is closely related to children taking on household
responsibilities. Children usually dropped out to take an
early job. Without adequate family control, and in an urban
atmosphere, they were more likely to engage in fighting,
drinking, robbery and other behavior problems. Case-by-case
analyses of those families in the low urban stratum in which
children dropped out of school showed that the family's
savings rose to more than 50 percent of their income because
of the extra jobs the dropout children took.

However, the need to accumulate money was not the major
reason why sons often took charge of the household in the
village. In these cases, son took on this responsibility
simply because of the social norms requiring them to do so.
In the village, the family savings were less than 25 percent

of their income when the sons took responsibility for the

112

household, but they reported no disciplinary and drinking
problems.

Case-by-case analysis showed that in all school dropout
cases, no money had been put aside for the children's
education. Instead, children in the low urban stratum became
Ia source of income after dropping out of school. Children of
the rich have access to advanced education while children of
the poor often drop out of school to take on premature
economic responsibility. The differential patterns of
spending remittances that occur among migrants' families
will likely increase the educational disparity among the
children of migrants' families for years to come.

From the above data, there is no doubt that the absence
of migrant fathers caused a disruption in children's
education, especially in low urban areas. However, the same
data also approve the validity of the fact that the social
status of the family is inversely related to the probability
of droping out of school. That is, the lower the
socioeconomic level oof the family, the higher the
probability the education will be terminated early (Defleur,
1973).

W

The fourth set of questions in this study consider the

effects of the husband migration on the unity of the family.

113

Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil (1983), in their study
on Sudanese labor migration, suggested that problems between
husbands and wives arise as a result of the husband's
migration. Keely and El-Saket (1984) said that leaving the
wife under the control of in-laws leads to problems that
affect the unity of the family. Azzam and El-Sharib (1980)
showed a rise in problems between Lebanese husbands and
wives when the husbands migrated and the wives stayed at
home. To understand more about such problems, several
sub-questions were addressed.

WA

How well is family unity maintained in families that do
not accompany the head of the household? It was’ expected
that families that accompanied the household head would have
fewer problems, and hence greater family unity.

To answer this question, several open-ended question
were asked during the interviews. An inter-case analysis was
then conducted to uncover these aspects of family histories
that resulted in problems arising between husbands and wives
or between wives and in-laws that affected the unity of the
family. One of these questions asked about changes in the
relationship between the husband and the wife after
migration (as perceived by the interviewee). Other questions
asked about the relationship between the wife and the

in-laws after the husband's migration (see Appendix A).

114

TABEJB 17

FAMILY PROBLEMS IN COMPARISON TO SOCIAL-INTERACTION PROBLEMS

IAccompanyinglNon-Accompanyingl
IPanilies IFamilies
I
Problem between Husband and Wife I 20% I 32%
I I
Wife's Social-Interaction Problemsl 58% I 32%
I

115

Table 17 shows that, as expected, families who stayed
home had a greater percentage of reported problems between
husbands and wives (32 percent) than those who accompanied
the household head (20 percent).‘

The analyses showed that problems were caused by three
major factors. These can be summarized according to their
importance.

The first major factor was husbands' envy of their
wives' leisurely lives and their resentment about
beingdeserted in a foreign country, especially if the wife
chose to stay home in spite of being allowed to accompany
her husband.

Those wives preferred the social-interaction atmosphere
in their home country to the stress of being alone in the
host country. In one case, a couple divorced because the
wife refused to go to Saudi Arabia.

The second major factor that caused problems between
husbands and wives was children dropping out of school and
resulting disciplinary problems. Husbands often became
resentful of their wives' attention to the children, and
this increased problems in their relationship.

The third factor that caused problems between husbands
and wives was wives being under the management of in-laws.
Twenty-seven percent of wives who lived under in-law
management reported having problems with their husbands.

This does not mean that those wives were not having problems

116

with their in-laws. Case-by-case analysis showed that 71
percent of wives who stayed under in-law management were
having serious problems with them as well. The most serious
problems were reported in families where the brother in-law
was managing the family. In one case, the brother in-law
asked the wife to seek-a divorce from his brother and marry
him. When that happened, the wife was obliged to give her
ten-year-old son the responsibility that the brother in-law
had previously assumed. This resulted in a declining the
son's school performance becuase less time was left ffor him
to care for his education.

Table 17 shows that 20 percent of the wives who
accompanied their husbands also reported marital problems.
To investigate the source of these problems, wives were
asked about social-interaction difficulties they
encountered. Frequently mentioned by wives who accompanied
their husbands were stresses from being away from their home
country and from lack of opportunities for social
interaction. Table 17 shows that wives who accompanied their
husbands reported more social-interaction problems (58
percent) than those who stayed home (32 percent). Many wives
who accompanied their husbands complained of the restricted
social-interaction atmosphere in the Arab oil countries.
For example, they reported that they were unable to drive
their private cars in Saudi Arabia, and that they could not

find the same type of people they had as friends in Jordan.

117

As a result, many of them decided to leave their husbands
and return to Jordan alone.

Among wives who did not accompany their husbands,
social interaction problems in the home typically resulted
from three conditions. First, the isolation of the wives in
the village. These wives reported not having enough time for
social interaction because of increased home and farm
responsibilities and also because the farms are far apart
from each other. Second, isolation of wives in the urban
strata as a consequence of a hostile atmosphere with Ithe
neighbors resulting from behaviour problems of 'children
whose father was absent. Third, .interaction problems
occurred as a result of wives living with in—laws. Sixty
percent of the wives who lived with in-laws experienced
restrictions on their social interaction atmosphere.

The specific kinds of problems that arose between
husbands and wives (whether springing from the social
atmosphere in the host ~country or the three factors
mentioned above for those who stayed home) are closely
related to the family's area of residence. Investigation of
such relationships led to the second sub-question.
W

How does the area of residence of migrants affect the
occurrence of problems between husbands and wives? It was
expected that families from rural areas who stayed home

would experience the most problems of interference by

118

IProblems with Husbands

TABLE 18

WIVES' PROBLEMS WITH HUSBANDS BY STRATA

IProblems with Husbands forI

 

 

 

 

Strata Ifor Accompanying Familiesl Hon-Accompanied Families I
High Urban I 36% I 44%

Middle UrbanI 10% I 30%

Low Urban I 0% I 39%

Village E 15% E 0%

 

119

in-laws in the wives' personal affairs, and this
interference would in turn affect the wives' relationships
with their husbands.

Table 18 shows that, contrary to expectations, problems
between husbands and wives were most frequent in families
from the high income urban stratum, regardless of whether or
not the wife accompanied her husband. These wives, as said
before, are more independent and managing their own house
holds. Also, they can accmpany their professional husbands
but they chose not to due to the lack of socialized life in
the host country. The rates of reported marital problems
among families from the high urban stratum were 36 percent
among wives who accompanied their household,and 46 percent
among those who stayed home. Among wives from the middle and
low urban strata, problems were more common among those who
stayed home (30 percent and 39 percent respectively). Wives
from the village reported
relatively few marital problems regardless of whether they
accompanied their husbands or remained home.

The occurrence of marital problems in the high income
urban stratum depend on whether or not, the wife accompanied
her husband. Among wives who accompanied their husband, a
major cause of marital problems appeared to be problems in
social interaction with others in the host country. Table 19
shows that wives from high income stratum complained of

social-interaction problems in the host country far more

120

than any other stratum (73 percent). As noted previously,
these wives encountered a very restricted social atmosphere
in the host country, they were unable to drive their own car
in Saudi Arabia, they were often not able to find jobs
there, and they lacked the same kinds of friends they had at
home. I

In contrast, high income urban wives who stayed home
generally remained in charge of their family's personal
affairs. And many found jobs in the service sector which
gave them opportunities for social interaction. None of
those wives who stayed home reported any social-interaction
problems. However, their decision to stay in their home
country often made husbands envious of their leisurely lives
and resentful of being deserted in a foreign country which
apparently led to a high rate of marital problems.

In one high urban case, the husband first migrated with
his family. The wife then returned alone because of a lack
of job opportunities in the host country and in order to
provide her children with a professional education in
Jordanian universities. She had a good career in Jordan with
a car to drive, sophisticated friends, and full charge of
her family. In the host country, the husband became
accustomed to the company of Arab friends from the Culf
countries, and he came to admire their social norms and
lifestyle. He returned to Jordan with jewelry, expensive

clothes and some land in the name of his wife. He asked his

121

TABLE 19

WIVES' SOCIAL INTERACTION PROBLEMS BY STRATA

ISocial-interaction ProblemslSocial-Interaction Problems I

 

 

 

 

Strata Ifor Accompanying Families Ifor Non-Accompanying Familiesl
High Urban I 73% I 0% I
Hiddle UrbanI 60% I 30% I
Low Urban I 0% I 39% I
Village E 29% E 45% E

 

122

wife to give up working and stay at home. She refused, and
they eventually divorced after twenty years of marriage.

Women from the middle urban stratum were also more
likely to experience social-interaction problems if they
acCompanied their husbands (60 percent) than if they stayed
home (30 percent). A possible explanation is that those
wives had nearly the same educational levels as those from
the high income stratum, and faced essentially the same
kinds of social interaction problems (not finding a suitable
job or friends with equal levels of education. However,
these social interaction problems did not lead to any of the
middle urban stratum wives leaving their husband and
returning alone into the home country. Consequently, most of
them did not experience marital problems.

Among these wives who remained home, the main source of
social-interaction problems was the management by in-laws,
who often tried to restrict the wife's contacts with others.
Although in most cases in which in-laws were in management,
there were no problems between husbands and wives in the
middle urban stratum. When there were such problems, their
major source was in-law management. Women from the middle
urban stratum were more likely to complain of in-law
problems when they stayed home and did not migrate. During
the interviews for this research, many wives from the middle
.income stratum reported problems with in-laws in regard to

money management. The money from remittances was spent on

123

the extended family, with little left for the 'wife and
children. In many cases the father found that the best
solution to these problems was to return to Jordan.

Women from the low urban stratum and the villages had
fewer social-interaction problems. in the host countries
(zero percent and 29 percent respectively). This is probably
because they found it easier,to interact with people in the
host country. They shared with those people the same level
of literacy and many Arabic social norms and traditions,
unlike women from high and middle urban strata who did not
find much in-common with women in the host country.

Among women in the low urban and village strata who
stayed home, social interaction problems were fairly common
(39 and 45 percent, respectively). These problems arose for
a variety of reasons. For women in the low urban stratum,
social interaction problems were related to abandonment by
the neighborhood community when their children engaged in
such hostile acts as robbery and fighting.

In the village, the women reported not having enough
time for social interaction because of increased
responsibilities for both the farm and the home, beside the
fact that the farmhouses are located far away from each
other. Nevertheless, none of those wives reported having any
marital problems.

Problems between husbands and wives in the low income

urban stratum appeared to be the cause of children's

124

behavioral problems. Many children dropped out of school,
had marginal jobs, drank, and committed various kinds of
crimes. In one case, the head of the family abandoned his
family completely. In Jordan, dancing and singing careers
are thought to be beneath everyone but Gypsies, who are
regarded. with contempt. The mother had encouraged her
teenage children, who were talented singers and dancers, to
persue these careers. This family was shunned by the
surrounding neighborhood. The head of the family in the host
country, outraged by the career his wife had favored and his

children had chosen, abandoned his family completely.

W

It appears that while labor migration had many economic
benefits for many families, it also created many social
problems for wives and children. Children in poor areas were
forced to drop out of school and face the burdens of
adulthood prematurely. Women from high income stratum had
problems with their husbands as a result of living
independently in the home country. In-law management created
many problems for wives which in turn affected their
relationships with their husbands. From a social
perspective, it is far safer for both children and wives to
accompany the household head than for the family to remain
behind. However, restrictive policies in Arab oil countries

that prevent families of low skilled laborers from

125

accompanying their household head may have drastic effects

on these households.

We.

The data collected in this study did not show any
substantial statistical differences between the studied
sample and national figures about the Jordanian. migrant
workers in terms of the educational level of men, the
occupational status of the migrants' wives, and the
occupations of village men.

MW
If we compare data from the Jordanian Labor Ministry
about household head education with the data obtained
in this study, the difference is relatively small.
According to the latter, about 40 percent of the
migrant workers held undergraduate degrees, 25 percent
held high school degrees, and none were illiterate. The
Ministry of Labor found the same levels of education
for Jordanians working in the Gulf (Ibrahim, E, 1986).
This indicates that the household heads in this study
were typical of the larger population of migrants with
respect to education.
WW3.

The data obtained in this study show that 14 percent of
the women in migrants' families are employed. This is

not substantially different from the level of 10.5

126

percent for all Jordanian families (United Nation, ILO
Year book of labor Statistic, 1984). This small
difference is probably due to the fact that, as already
noted, migrant laborers are more educated than the
population at large.
The data also show that none of the wives in the
families studied were working in the industrial sector.
Many women in the low urban stratum and villages
reported that they sewed at home to earn money. All of
the employed women in the subject families worked as
teachers, secretaries, or in government. This. reflects
the low level of the Jordanian female participation in
the production sector. As Mujahed (1982) observed,
manufacturing, which accounted for 35 percent of the
female work force in 1961, dropped to 10.2 percent in
1976. It would seem that women are increasingly
disenchanted with industrial production work and are
turning to the service sector. The low level of the
Jordanian female labor force participation is closely
related to a whole spectrum of factors. The most
important ones are cultural values, Islam, martial
status, level of education, fertility rate, husband's
education and the degree of urbanization.
lungLnenLLchmtign
In this research, it was found that all village
migrants had served in the military before migration,

although this factor was not involved in the selection

127

of subjects. This finding suggests that village
families were typical of all village families, since
both Zaghal (1984) and Keely and El-Saket (1984) found
that most villagers tend to migrate to the Arab oil

countries after leaving the military service.

128

CHAPTER IV

DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION

This final chapter summarizes and discusses the major
‘findings of this study concerning the impact of labor
migration on the socioeconomic experiences of out migrants'
families in Jordan. In this research, efforts were made to
take into account four important aspects of family life that
could affect or be affected by labor migration in order to
reach a more comprehensive understanding of the domestic
consequences of migration. The four sets of impacts were:
family's economic condition, household management,
children's discipline, and unity of the family. In addition,

policy implications of the findings are also examined.

Wm

Those who have written about the economic consequences
of labor migration and remittances differ in their judgment
about its negative and positive impacts for labor exporting
countries. Yet, they talk little or nothing about such an an
impact on the migrants' families to whom workers migrated in
the first place. Therefore, very little phas been written
about the effects of labor 'migration on the economic
conditions of families. El-Saket (1983) found that the

village migrants were the most likely to save at a

129

substantial rate, where forty-eight percent of them were
saving 30 percent or more of their remittances. Only 27
percent of the migrants from other areas tended to save at
the same rate.

The results obtained by this study agree with El-Saket
that villagers still save more than other strata (61 percent
saved more than 30 percent of their remittances). At the
same time, however, this study found much higher levels of
savings in all other strata more than reported by El-Saket
(50 percent saved 30 percent or more of their income).

The differences between the results of El-Saket's (1983)
study and this study are likely due to two factors:

The first factor is the changes that have occurred in
Ithe economic conditions since El-Saket did his study. The
effects of the decline in oil prices on labor migration were
not as apparent then as they are now. More people now feel
that they have to save more because of the uncertainty of
the future of oil prices. Moreover, the rate of inflation
has decreased since the early nineteen eighties (Al-Fanik,
1988). Decreased inflation should enable more people from
low income areas to increase their savings.

The second factor is that El-Saket's study failed to
control several major factors that can affect the level of
savings. He did not show how many of the migrants' families
he studied had accompanied their household-head to the host

country. The present study shows that this factor has great

130

impact on savings of these families. The results show that
those who accompanied their families were not able to save
much because of the high expenses of living in the host
countries. In most cases, migrants had to pay for health
insurance, private education, and other services for their
children. Nor is it surprising that villagers were not able
to save when they accompanied their families. Village
migrants saved more when they left their families in the
village where they could take advantage of informal food
production. Part of the food they need can be supplied by
their farms, gardens, and domestic animals. Also,- life
expenses in villages are generally less than those in big
cities. Many village and some low urban women who remained
in Jordan reported sewing their clothes and performing other
domestic services for themselves.'

The findings from this study show that families from
the high urban stratum who remained in Jordan were not able
to save 'very much because they felt it was necessary to
maintain the relatively high standard of living expected in
their area of residence. Those people have also been the
most affected by the deterioration in oil prices, which led
many Arab oil countries to sharply reduce wages for many
professional migrants, sometimes as much as 80 percent for
some professions. Also, the restrictive policies of some
Arab oil countries required most professional migrants to

share their income with the local business owner, who, in

131

most cases, provided no services in return. Consequently a
majority of these migrants expressed doubts and uncertainity
about the security of their future careers in the Arab oil
countries.

These. findings suggest that, in contrast to what
El-Saket (1983) had concluded, the lower savings reported by
migrant families in the early 1980's were not caused merely
by the spending behavior of families. It appears, rather,
that market prices also influenced the level of saving. The
greater amount of savings reported by migrants' families in
this research was partially due to the lower inflation that
Jordan experienced since the mid-eighties.

Another difference between the findings of El-Saket's
and this study lies in the areas of investment. El-Saket
(1983) reported that small retail stores were the dominant
forms of investment where 52 percent of all migrants claimed
this as a major area of investment. In contrast, this study
found that such investment droped to only 15 percent of the
total. That decline probably reflects the facts that smaller
remittances have recently been sent back to Jordan, so that
less foreign exchange was available to purchase imports and
luxuries. Adding to these factors is the recent drop in the
value of the Jordanian Dinar against the 0.8. Dollar. Major
forms of investment at the present time are bank accounts
with interest (30 percent) and taxi cabs for rent (13

percent). Taxi cabs for rent became an attractive source of

‘132

income for many returning migrant workers because of the
lack of other employment opportunities in Jordan in recent
years. Sometimes, the returned migrant drives the taxi or
mostly rent it to a driver who takes a salary or a share of
profit while the taxi owner take the rest of money.

This study concurs with the findings of El-Saket that
most migrants prefer real estate as a secure type of
investment. It also concurs with his finding that moSt
returned migrants believe that migration led neither new
skills nor to better jobs. It concurs also with El-Saket's
finding that productive investments (that generate extra
monthly income) were preferred. Although El-Saket found that
a very small percentage of families (4 percent) in the high
urban area invested in stocks, such investments were not
reported by any one in the present study. Moreover, only 12
percent of the villagers and 7 percent of migrants from
other strata reported investing in improving their farms.

The latter finding is in keeping with Fergany's (1982)
claim that labor migration in Yemen had a destructive effect
on Yemen's agriculture, since most of the remittances were
used to buy durable goods while farms were neglected. This
result is also in keeping with McCoy and Wood's (1985)
description of the devastating effect of labor migration on
the Caribbean agriculture.

The lack of investment in large projects in Jordan, as

Al-Fanik (1988) has noted, is a consequence of Jordan's

133

relatively small population and its limited resources. New
industries need a large-scale market which is not available
in Jordan. To export, these industries have to be
competitive with the low cost-production industries of South
East Asia. Also, families found that it was more secure and
probably more profitable to invest in rental buildings than
to invest in industries, agriculture, or stocks. Also, the
Iran-Iraq war and the civil war in Lebanon spurred a
tremendous increase in the demand for housing, often driving
prices up. The increase in housing profits reflected the
'willingness of the war refugees to pay high rent.

However, with more and more people investing in
apartment construction, with the end of the Iran-Iraq war,
and with the increase in the cost of construction
(especially after the recent drop in the Jordanian
currency), these forms of investment became unprofitable
(many apartments now stand vacant or unfinished in
metropolitan Amman). This has left unsettled the problem of

future areas of investment.

WWW

Household management is the other realm in which labor
migration has had a major impact on families of out migrant
workrs. It is understandable that the absence of the
household head would create a vacuum in family leadership

that Someone else has to fill, following some local

134

traditions. Much controversy has arisen concerning the
impact on wives and family leadership. Ibrahim (1978)
hypothesized that ”labor migration could lead ultimately to
a new social order and‘ to the feminization of the Arab
families of migrant ~workers in the home countries."
Serageldin et al., 1984, wrote that "there is an increase in
the amount of work by the migrant's wife compared to what
women in the 'Arab society traditionally do. As a result,
women's management over resources will dramatically
increase, and this in turn may transform the role of Arab
women. Such change in roles may survive the return of the
male migrant; a fact which will change the role of women in
the these Arab societies." Burki (1984) hypothesized that
labor migration would lead to situations in which women
would have more management over family resources, although
he recognized that many of those who live under in-law
management would lose some of the protection of their
husbands. El-Saket (1983) suspected that the age of the wife
may affect the degree to which she can manage her family
(the older she is, the more power she will have). He
suggested further research regarding this point.

In this study it was found that age, educational level,
career status and area of origin are all critical factors
affecting the wife's ability to manage the household. It was.
found that in 50 percent of the cases in which the wives

were under in-law management, the women did not have

135

school-age children. This confirms El-Saket expectations.
However in many other cases, the woman was old enough to
live under her eldest son's management. In these cases, it
was found that both women's educational level and the
prevailing social norms affect her ability1 to manage her
family. If the woman was not well educated, and the norms
did not permit her to manage the family, the eldest son was
likely to be the manager.

Wives from the high urban stratum had far fewer
problems with in-laws than those living in the middle urban
stratum, and some what fewer problems than wives from the
low urban stratum. These high urban wives were better
educated, and some had careers. The people living there were
mostly from the old urban centers of the East and West Banks
of Jordan. Wives in these areas have high social status with
more freedom to take care of their business without being
under others' management. Consequently, 80 percent of these
wives managed their own homes.

In the low urban stratum and the village, management
of the family by in-laws or the eldest son was related to
wives' education and economic independence. The woman was in
charge in about 55 percent in low urban areas. This is a
high ratio, given the large percentage of those women have
low level of education. Women's extra jobs (such as sewing)
seem to allow them greater role and responsibilities even

though fewer opportunities were available to them (as is the

136

case with Pakistani women, as Burki (1984) reported. In the
Jordanian village, the in-laws haVe less management power on
their daughter in-law's affairs than in the middle and low
urban areas of Amman. In the East Jordanian village, the
woman or her eldest son (if she doese not have sufficient
education or training to 'take responsibility) would be the
manager in her husbands' absence. (In 45 percent of these
cases the son was the manager.)

In the middle urban stratum, most of the migrants'
families were managed either by in-laws (50 percent) or by
the eldest, son (20 percent) after the departure of the
husband. This is a surprising finding, given the high
educational level and strong employment opportunities for
these women in comparison with the village and low urban
stratum women. Abu Lughuod (1962) and Zaghal (1984) argued
that large rural-urban migration in the Arab world results
in bringing the rural norms to the city, where the norms
tend to linger in largely unassimilated urban fringes areas.
'They found no clear differences between urban, semi-rural
and rural areas regarding women's status; contrary to the
Western urbanization experience. While Abu Lughuod's
conclusion may expalin part of the above finding, one must
not forget that, as mentioned before, where a social class
system exists, middle class people will be the most

conservative in their attachment to religion and tradition.

137

In Jordan, however, more than one set of "traditional”
social norms are at work. In the middle urban stratum, only
30 percent of migrants' wives managed ‘their households,
while in the village 48 percent of migrants' wives managed
their households.

A possible explanation of this finding is that the
"received" social norms prevalent in the middle urban and
low urban strata are different from those prevalent in
Jordanian villages. And indeed most of the population in
Amman came originally from Palestinian towns and villages
where the father in-law used to have the ultimate power
over family members, including sons and daughters-in-law.
The sons work and live on the farm that belongs to their
father. Even though these people have subsequently lost
their land and become refugees in other places, the original
norms still control the family's way of life and family
relationships.

These norms are more evident in middle urban than in
low urban strata of Amman. This is likely due to the fact.
that those who live in the U.N. camps and surrounding lower
urban areas have built themselves up from nothing except for
United Nations assistance. The power of in-laws is more
common in the middle urban areas where the grandfather had
migrated with some capital that would give him the economic
power and moral authority to continue his rule over his

extended family.

138

On the contrary, the norms in the Jordanian villages
are of nomadic origin (Bedouin). Sheep and camels were the
symbol of wealth. Sons grew up to be fighters. The son's
status is determined by his ability to support and protect,
his family. Village sons Still practice these norms, usually
taking charge of the family during the absence of their
fathers. The norms they follow are thus quite different from
those in the middle urban stratum, where Palestinian sons
still generally live under the management of their
grandfather.

As Keely and El-Saket (1984) wrote about the effects of

migration on family life:

”For some migrant male workers, this is a process of
two steps forward, and one step back on the migrant's
ureturn. Although responsibility, power and status in a
family cannot be put on and taken off like an overcoat,
the changes in women's roles are not necessarily going
to proceed on a smooth path.”

This observation holds true for many wives in this
study. In some cases, the problems of the wife appeared or
intensified after the return of the husband, since he was
unwilling to share authority or change certain old norms.
His wife could no longer accept her pre-migration status,
while the husband felt be humiliated if his wife appeared as

the manager in front of his family and male friends.

139

The impact of labor migration on the social order, and
particularly on the status of women, has been far less rosy
than Ibrahim and Serageldin et al., 1984, anticipated.
Jordan provides an excellent test of their hypotheses (that
out labor migrantion would bring a new social order to the
Arab labor-exporting societies). This study clearly
demonstrates that the expectation of (labor migration
creating a new social order is far from being true in the
case of Jordan. Out labor migration just exacerbated the
differences in women status already existing in the society.
This supports Griffith's (1985) argument that labor
migration will not change women status at the bottom of the

social ladder.
Was

Another aspect of change is children school
achievement. Burki (1984) claimed that migrants' children
would draw benefits from the significant increase I in
household income that results from the flow of remittances.
Aside from being better clothed and better fed, he argued
that children would also receive much better education when
compared with children from non-migrant households.

Saa'd- El-Dean and Abd-El-Fadeil (1983), during their
interviews with school principal in Sudan, found large
differences in the level of achievement between children who

had fathers working abroad and those whose fathers stayed

140

home. Saa'd-El-Dean and Abd-Al-Fadeil also found that social
science researchers in Yemen had begun to pay more attention
to the number of children in rural areas whose fathers were
abroad, where the mothers had great difficulty with
disciplining them. Children began to take their father's
role at younger ages, as well as to begin smoking and taking
drugs (al-qat).

The data obtained in this study are in accord with
Saa'd-El-Deen and Abd-El-Fadeil's findings. The data shows
that improvements in school achievement among children who
accompanied their father were far higher than among those
who stayed in Jordan. The most disadvantaged were the
children from the low urban stratum. Their fathers held low
status jobs in the host countries and a large percentage of
them were not allowed to accompany their families with them.
Also, the study shows that families who stayed home did not
spend ladequate amounts from the remittances on their
children's education. Consequently, although school
performance deteriorated among most children who did not
accompany their father, this was most pronounced among
children from the low income urban stratum.

Children from the low income urban stratum also had a
very high rate of school dropout (60 percent). This
percentage is much higher than the national average (about

11 percent according to the 1979 census and Zaghal, 1984).

141

In contrast, children from the high income stratum had
better records of school achievements than those from all
other strata; both accompanied and non-accompanied. High
urban families reported the highest rate of spending on
private education for their children in their home country.

In short, labor migration, as a process, has widened
the educational gap between the rich and the poor for
generations to come. Many children of the well-to-do
professional families were allowed to join their fathers in
the host country. These families also spent more money on
their children and had access to quality education in the
home country, while children of the poor often dropped out
of school to take on family responsibilities, just as
Saa'd-El-Deen and AbdéEl-Fadeil found for Yemeni children.
Burki's expectation (that higher income from remittances
would enable migrants' families to pay more for their
children's education and, then, the children's school
achievement would increase) is not true except for the
children from high strata; both accopanied and
non-accopanied. The money that was spent on children's
education in the home country was used largely to replace
the time that the mother herself had previously spent on
educating the children. As mothers in the home country
assumed increasing responsibilities, they had to pay more
for private teachers. In those strata in which this tendency

was most apparent (the high and middle urban strata),

142

children's school achievement did not increase; it merely
remained the same.

Thus, labor migration actually preserved the
traditional social class order where the high class
(privileged class) can monopolize the opportunities to
accumulate capital by saving and investment, even education,
so far these involve expenditures (Weber, 1956). Thus,
altough some low urban people had access to more capital
through labor migration, such access was not enough to
encounter the spending power of the high urban families on
children's education.

Moreover, the results showed a high rate of bloody
crimes, robbery and drinking problems among children who
dropped out of school in the low urban stratum. This also
supports the results obtained by Saa'd-El-Dean and
Abd-Al-Fadeil regarding migrants' children in Sudan and
Yemen, where they started smoking and using drugs at early
ages. It should be noted in the present study that a higher
percentage of children are taking on family responsibilities
in the village than in the 'low income urban stratum.
However, the school dropout .rate and these crimes by
children were observed more frequently in the city rather in
the village. Children in the village were taking
responsibilities mostly in accordance with prevailing social
norms. The economic condition of families in the low urban

stratum has a direct effect on children's assumptions of

143

responsibility. Many of these children were dropping out of
school to take an early job. They became an important source
of family income. The level of saving in most of these cases
was more than 60 percent of the remittances. Accumulation of
money became the major.goal for these families, while other
social values were ignored or (undervalued. Without enough
discipline, and in an urban atmosphere, these children
engaged in fighting, drinking, robbery and other behavioral
problems. This finding largely supports Beeghley's (1989)
statemet that the lower the social class, the higher rate of
alcholism and personal problems.

Overall, these cases show that labor migration did not
improve school achievement among most migrants' children by
increasing the family income, contrary to Burki's (1984)
suggestion. It was found in this research that the patterns
of spending of remittances among migrant families of
different strata increased the gap between the children of
professionals, who were permitted to accompany their fathers
and for whom more was spent on their education, and the low
income urban children. The latter children take on Iadult
responsibilities and life styles before receiving a proper

education.

W1

In this study, it was shown that the sources of

problems between husband and wife varied according to the

144

area of residence. In the high urban stratum, problems arose
because of the factors that were described by Azzam and
El-Sharib (1980). The wives seemed less willing to leave
their home countries since the desirable social-life
atmosphere that was available at home would not be available
in the host country. Many wives experienced stress from
living in isolation in the Arab oil countries. This study
shows that mental problems became more intense when the wife
did not accompany her husband or refused to remain in the
host country. In those cases, the husband often became
envious of his wife's leisurely life and resentful at being
deserted in a foreign country.

Azzam and El-Sharib (1980) reported the same kind of
problems with Lebanese women. They presented data showing
that more than 70 percent of migrants' wives in Lebanon
preferred to have their husband stay home even if the family
income would be 25 percent less than if he migrated. Fifteen
percent of their sample acknowledged that the marriage-bond
was weakened by migration. Many wives in their study also
complained about their increased responsibilities for
disciplining the children and other duties of daily life.
Sixty-three percent of the decisions to migrate were made by
the husband, despite objections from their wives in 34
percent of the cases. Only in 4 percent of the migration
cases did the wish to migrate originate with the wife (Azzam
and Sharib, 1980).

145

The finding of this study is that only women from the
high urban stratum had the same rate of family problems as
Lebanese women. This may be attributed to the more
cosmopolitan lives of high urban women in Jordan as compared
to women in other strata. As Serageldin et al., 1984,
explained: ”labor migration would evoke a reaction from a
Yemeni migrant of rural origin, whose exposure to the
lifestyle of Riyadh or Jidda city in Saudi Arabia gives him
the experience of a European big city, very different from
that of a ,professional Lebanese, Egyptian, or Jordanian
migrants' family who may find the lifestyle in Saudi Arabia
confining and dull in contrast to Beirut, Cairo or Amman."

The differences in attitudes toward migration among
different strata of Jordanian women is most likely
comparable to the differences found by women who came from a
Yemeni town and the one who came from Beirut. Woman from
high urban areas in Jordan, as said before, may find that,
in the host country, she is prevented from work or even
driving her own car. For her, this would seem like a prison
atmosphere. A woman from a middle urban area, on the other
hand, may likely be under the management of in-laws if she
stays home. In that case, the restricted atmosphere in the
host country may not differ much from the restrictions
imposed by the social norms if she stays in Jordan. She
would find that the social norms which dominate the Arab oil

countries do not differ much from those that control her

146

movement at home; unlike the woman from a high urban area.
Therefore, it is far more comfortable for middle urban women
to migrate and stay with their husband than to stay behind
under the management of in-laws.

The problem of the in-law interference that Keely and
El-Saket (1984) noted was most apparent in the middle urban
stratum. Keely and El-Saket especially noted the
relationship that could appear between the brother-in-law
and the wife who was left under his management. A
significant proportion of returned migrants (60 percent)
reported problems related to the separation of the husband
and problems of young wives with in-laws or problems with
relatives who are temporarily heading the household. The
data obtained in this study support Keely and El-Saket's
findings. In all cases in which the wife reported problems

between her and her husband in the middle urban stratum,
in-laws were managing the family.

In the low urban stratum, the main source of problems
Ibetween husbands and wives was the discipline of children.
The household head often became outraged by a decline in his
children's educational achievement and the increasing
disciplinary problems among his children in the home
country. Besides being angry at his children's behavior, he
often put much of the blame on his wife. These kinds of
problems were not accounted for in the previous literature,

but in this study it was found that disciplinary problems

147

among the children of migrants . deeply affected the

relationship between the husband and wives.

Conclusions.

According to the findings of this research, it is not
the spending behavior alone that prevents the families of
migrants from retaining large amounts of the-relatively high
remittances received during the early eighties, as El-Saket
(1983) had assumed. Instead, market prices and investment
opportunities largely controlled their spending and
investment behavior. When the rate of inflation in Jordan
declined in the middle eighties, migrants' families were
often able to save more, although the market still did not
encourage large types of investment in agriculture or
industries.

While labor migration provided economic benefits for
many families, it also created many social problems for
wives and children. Children in poor areas were forced to
drop out of school and to face the burdens of adulthood
prematurely. Women from high income areas had problems with
their husbands as a result of living independently in the
home country. In-laws management of the family created many
PtObdems for wives which in turn affected the relationships
"it?! their husbands. From a social perspective, it is far

b9ti:er for both children and wife to accompany the household

h°a<3 than to remain behind. However, restrictive policies in

148'

the Arab-oil countries that prevent families of low skilled
laborers from accompanying their household head may cause
severe social damage in their household.

The findings of this study support Saa'd-El-Deen and
Abd-Al-Fadeil (1983) hypotheses that "in contrast to what
was formerly believed in the labor exporting countries, that
migration will improve the welfare of migrant families,
there is now the feeling that this is not at all for the
good. There are many negative socioeconomic effects, in
addition to the positive ones that were focused on in many
previous studies. Labor migration leads to the separation of
the household head from his family, since most migrants are
24-40 years old males who are not allowed to bring their
wives and children with them. Moreover, the data obtained in
this study show that migration often involves families who
still have school-age children. Many of the wives who were
left behind came under the management of their in-laws or
eldest sons. This caused problems for the wives with their
in-laws, for sons with school achievement, and between wives
and husbands who blamed each other for the adverse
consequences of labor migration, especially on children.

Most migrant families have not benefited socially, as
some theorists have asserted (Ibrahim, 1978, Burki, 1984).
Far from creating a new social order in the labor exporting
countries, labor migration has created some unexpected and

hidden social problems and exacerbated others. On the one

149

hand, all migrant families reported that they had benefited
financially from such migration. On the other hand, they all
complained about the increased level of uncertainty and
expressed fear for the security of their jobs in the future.
Many families reported problems between the husband and wife
and with their children's education. This varied from one
social stratum ~to another, based on attachment to social

traditions and norms.

W

This study suggests two critical questions for further
research. The first question concerns a new form of labor
migration where highly educated wives and female teachers
migrate to teach in female schools and universities in many
Arab oil countries where mixing male and female in schools
is prohibited. In such a migration, the opposite is true for
all aspects of normal labor migration. The husband of the
migrant women must accompany her or otherwise cannot get
into the host country as part of the Islamic teachings to
avoid adultery. Under the influence of high wages for these
highly demanded skills, the husband may leave his low paid
job in Jordan and accompany his wife. As a result, the whole
social order, relationships, and tradional sexual divission
of labor in such a family reversed. It would be very
important to examine the social consequences of such

migration on the family level, as was done in this research.

150

The second question concerns the change in investment
patterns of remittances after the recent drop in the value
of the Jordanian Dinar and the end of the Iran-Iraq war
(which caused a sharp drop in the demand for rental
apartments). When the research for this study was completed,
these changes were still in progress. Migrants were still
depending on construction as a form of investment. However,
the above recent changes are likely to make migrant families
increasingly hesitant to invest in rental housing. The cost
of construction has also increased because of the decreasing
value of the Jordanian Dinar as well as the profit from
rental houses. The decrease in the value of the Jordanian
Dinar has also reduced the profit of most import and export
businesses. It will be usefull to carry a follow up research
to see how investors are adjusting to these new
circumstances, especially in the light of the recent
economic unity agreement between Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, and

Egypt in 1989, needs further research.

221122.1mnlicatigns.

This study has ssome important implications for
sociologists and social service specialists at both the
micro and macro levels. The study shows that the area of
investment made by families is related to larger problems on

the social level. On the national level, the opening of a

151

big regional market for commodities could make investment in
the production sector worthwhile for small investors and
draw investment from other areas like real estate and
building construction. The recent economic unity agreement
between Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen (signed in February,
1989) may turn out to be a major step in this regard. It
promises to create a large market for Jordan's exports and
industries.

The study shows that people living in low and middle
urban areas are not having problems with saving (contrary to
El-Saket's‘conclusion). (This is probably because of the
different economic opportunities prevailing at the time of
each study. However, the economic problems seem minor
compared to the social problems that labor migration has
intensified. Seventy-three percent of the wives in the high
income urban stratum who accompanied their husbands
complained about the stress of being isolated in a foreign
country without opportunities for a normal social life.
Problems frequently arose between wives and husbands when
wives preferred to return home alone. The fact that half of
the ines in the middle urban stratum lived under the
management of in-laws created many problems in their
marriages due to the interference by in-laws. Further, well
over half of the low urban stratum families who stayed home

saw their children drop out of school. Dropping out of

152

school was accompanied by bloody fighting, drinking, and
robbery among these children.

If the economic benefits of higher income for out
migrants' families are compared with the social problems
they have experienced, the social problems clearly outweigh
those economic benefits. For families with school-age
children,it might be better for the household-head to stay
home if he cannot be sure that his wife can take on
responsibility for the family. Leaving the wife and children
at the management of in-laws, or letting children drop out
of school makes no sense in spite of the extra money earned
abroad. The same kinds of ~jobs that workers from low urban
areas are migrating to fill in the Arab oil countries are,
to certain limit, available in Jordan with decent salary,
especially after the rise in wages as a result of the large
out labor migration in Jordan. In fact, Jordan is importing
workers to fill low-status positions that out migrant
workers have vacated. There should be a public awareness for
low skilled workers to reconsider the unexpected social
costs of their migration, especially for their children.
Professionals are a special case, however, since they are
forced to migrate for two reasons. First, Jordan is still
producing many more professionals than it can’ employ.
Second, in Jordan, unemployment among professionals is

higher than among any low-skilled workers (Al-Fanik, 1988).

153

Therefore, out labor migration for professionals is needed
as long as they have little job opportunities in Jordan.

Most of the social problems that migrants' families
live require a regional cooperation, ‘especially between
Jordan and the Arab oil countries. Labor migration policies
in the Arab oil countries seem to contribute to the various
social problems that migrants' families face. Changing such
policies should reduce the size of the negative consequences
of out labor migration on the migrants' families.

Finally, the social interaction problem between migrants
and natives in host countries, especially for wives, needs
to be solved. Unfortunately, less can be done in this
regard. International women's clubs in host countries might
make the lives of migrants' wives less boring and «more
tolerable. Yet the problem of different social norms in the
host country and in the country of origin remain serious

obstacles for resolving this problem.

154

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160

APPENDIX

161

APPENDIX

The Questions that had been Asked during the Interviews
WW
1- Can the family accompany the household head?
2- Did the family accompany him?
3- What is the Educational level for the Father?
4- What was the husband's career before and after migration?
I 6- Who's responsible for the family after migration?
7- Do the relative take more responsibility toward the
family during their father's absence?
W ,
l-What is the educational level for the wife?
2- What was the wife's career before and after migration?
3- Does the wife drive a car?

4- Did the responsibility of the mother towards the
children' education change?

5- What kind of social responsibility does the wife have?

6- How is the relationship between the wife and the husband
now?

7- How is the relationship between the mother and the
children now?

8- How‘is relationship between the wife and the neighbors
now?

9- What is the level of education for the wife?
10- Did the wife engage in any domestic work (tailor etc.)?
11- Are there any divorce cases between the family members?

12- Did the wife become interested in the socialized parties
in her community.

162

Wren

1- What percentage of money did you spend on your children'
education now and on what?

2- What the level of achievement for your children at school
now?

3- Do any of the children engage in fighting at school?
4- Does any of the children engage in neighborhood fighting?
5- Do you know how the children spend their money?

6- What change had happened in your children'
responsibilities?

7- Are the boys interested in higher education now?

8- Are the girls interesting in studying and higher
education now?

9- Did any of the boys/girls who drop out of school?
10- How do the children spend their free time:?

11- Did the sons play any of the father's roles after

migration?

12- What is the role of the older son during his father's
absence?

MW

1- Has the level of spending on eating and clothes have
increased?

2- What is the percentage of total spending compared to the
total income?

3- What is the percentage of investment from income.

4- Specify whether you invest in:

a- House b- Taxi cab for rent

c- Farm d- Small retail stores
e- Land f- Bank account benefit/n

g- Gold h- Marriage

i- Stocks

163

5-What kind of residence do you have?
a- Before migration
- Rent/own - Number of rooms

- Rocks/Cement - space between neighbors
b- After migration:

- Rent/own - Number of rooms

- Rocks/Cement - space between neighbors

6- What are the source of income for the family before and
after migration:

7- Do you care for the economic situation in Jordan after
migration and how?

8- Do you care for the economic situation in the host
country and how?

9- Do you care for the economic global situation after
migration and how
- What are the most positive consequences of migration.
- What are the most deteriorating effect of migration.
- What are the problems you face after migration.

- Generally, how is the family unity now?

"70000001!i'IIIT