This paper is about the social construction of the refugee story – the overarching global narrative that shapes knowledge production, scientific inquiry, and political action. Despite an established literature about the refugee story, the process of revealing how political interests influence knowledge production about refugees remains a contemporary and unfolding project. Who is given the platform to speak about refugee experiences? How are these refugee stories curated and amplified? The answers to these questions reveal how state interests and national differences among refugee populations influence the ascription of worthiness and access to rights. I argue that refugee hosting in Jordan is central to the social construction of the global refugee narrative. I demonstrate that since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, refugee stories are identified, produced, and curated from Jordan and used primarily to perpetuate the interests of powerful states in the Global North. I unravel the global refugee narrative in five steps and describe which refugee stories are told or intentionally excluded. This research is based on 175 interviews with Syrian refugees, Jordanian citizens, and UN, NGO, and Jordanian government officials collected in 2016 and 2017.