Berkley Center

During my time so far in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, I have found it extremely hard to find anyone who actually identifies themselves as Jordanian. In my homestay, the mother is a Palestinian refugee, and the father sees himself as Lebanese. My Arabic professor is Palestinian, and the guide on my recent trip to Wadi Faed is Iraqi. There are immense numbers of Syrian refugees in the area as well. So this begs the question: How do you have a country where the majority of the people residing within its borders don’t see themselves as citizens?

My roommate recently shared with me a story that demonstrates this issue. In a conversation with our host father recently, my roommate mentioned that he had met some more Jordanians recently. “Did they say ‘Ochay’?” asked our host father, mimicking the unique accent of the Bedouins in the region.

In the urban areas, no one speaks using this accent, and it represents how the father does not see himself, or most of the urban residents of Jordan for that matter, as really Jordanian. He automatically assumed that by “Jordanian” my roommate had meant “Bedouin.” And this assumption might be accurate: for the most part, the Bedouins are the only group that I have met that don’t see themselves as from somewhere else.

The root of Jordan’s identity crisis is that it has largely become a land of refugees. Surrounded by the violence-prone states of Lebanon, where a recent car bomb recalled the chaos of the past; Iraq, where the American invasion in 2003 displaced many people; Syria, where Bashar al-Assad’s reign of terror has compelled thousands of new refugees to cross the Jordanian border; and Palestine, where the Israeli occupation has caused 65 years of constant emigration from the West Bank, Jordan has become a safe-haven in the region.

Jordan currently has a population of around 6 million people. About two million of these people, of 33 percent of the citizenship, identify as Palestinian refugees. There are also approximately one million Iraqis residing inside Jordan. This means that of those two demographics alone, half of the population of Jordan sees themselves as non-permanent residents. Add in the other refugee groups and only a small portion of the population actually self-identifies as Jordanian. So what effect has this had on the politics of Jordan?

In the last election (2007), only 54 percent of the population turned out to vote, a number that is expected to decline even more in the upcoming elections at the beginning of 2013. Some of this is prescribed, rightfully so, to the fact that, as a monarchical country, the power of the representatives elected is actually very small. However, I would posit that this also has a lot to do with the demographic situation. As such a large section of the population does not see themselves as true citizens of Jordan, they feel little attachment to the state and as such do not feel the draw to participate as actively in the election process. This is simply a hypothesis; unfortunately, I have not had the time or the resources to do an empirical study of this phenomenon, but I feel that it would be an interesting area to explore.

In short, Jordan’s status as the only really stable country in the region has inadvertently caused it to have an identity crisis from the large number of refugees that have fled the violence of their home countries for the relative safety of Jordan. Only time will tell if these refugee groups truly become Jordanian or continue to feel as though they are not at home.