Workers Center Participatory Research and Design

In participatory mapping workshops in the Al-Hassan industrial zone (Irbid governorate), the Workers’ Centre featured prominently in everyday mobilities and social activities of most factory workers.

The Centre serves as a space for sports, leisure, education, religious activities and festivities; yet even more importantly as a space for time-pass – for meeting friends, making a phone call back home, or watching a football match after long factory shifts. The Workers’ Centre’s quality as a public space in which workers from different factories, origins and gender groups can meet in a safe and friendly environment outside the control of employers is central to its popularity. It thus provides a trusted place for workers to express grievances and access personal and legal support.

Workers qualify it as a space of “mental escape”, “relief” and “relaxation”, offering temporary respite from the extreme pressures of the factory-dormitory routines.