“The Brains Are Frozen”: Precarious Subjectivities in the Humanitarian Aid Sector in Jordan

Abstract

Under the influence of neoliberal policies and marketisation dynamics, the humanitarian sector’s labour conditions become increasingly insecure. Based on one year of fieldwork in Amman, Jordan, and interviews with 39 aid professionals, this article explores the experiences of these insecure and precarious labour conditions of national and international aid workers in Jordan. Precarity in the humanitarian field is often discussed concerning aid recipients, such as refugees. It is, however, understudied in connection to aid professionals and those providing aid and care, and there is a wider lack of research on university‐educated professionals’ experiences of precarity. In line with feminist and decolonial scholars, I understand labour as closely interconnected with other spheres of life and look at precarity through an emotional lens. I explore aid professionals’ emotions around their work conditions to come to a deeper understanding of precarious work and the difficulties of living in precarity. By taking emotions seriously, I show that they are an important yet understudied site of analysis to unravel what generates precarity for aid workers and precarity’s effects on aid workers’ lives and work. I argue that the structural conditions of their work produce precarious subjectivities, which are expressed in feelings such as frozenness, fatigue, and unsafety.