In an era marked by protracted humanitarian conflicts, and in a climate where aid funding is stated to be in decline globally, international organizations—and donors—are calling for more "localization" in their programs and projects. This is particularly true in the Middle East, which is the largest regional producer and host of displaced populations globally. Places like Jordan, for example, are increasingly identified as key locations for organizations to engage in more “localization” efforts to develop sustainable projects and solutions to replace their previous “relief” initiatives and efforts. In response, international organizations claim they are hiring more “national” staff (i.e. “local” workers) and partnering with “more local” organizations to carry out their mandates. But who are these “local” workers and organizations, and what do they do? Who “speaks” for the local in these spaces? Based on interviews with over 90 aid workers in Jordan, I find that workers construct “the local” through their ideas, practices, and daily routines in ways that reflect and reinforce historical global hierarchies of privilege and power; as well as among and between various "local" communities in Jordan. Specifically, aid workers—Jordanians and non-Jordanians alike—construct “the local” and Jordanians as more susceptible to corruption; and certain “local” locations and groups as more “risky” than others in this regard as well. This as a result shapes not only how aid workers think about their work, beneficiaries and the communities they engage with, but also the practices and processes informing how aid is distributed, reported, and conceptualized as projects and programs. My findings suggest that critical attention is needed to the ways in which relationships and interactions between and among aid workers, as well as the “local” communities they represent and interact with, reproduce particular social hierarchies and inequalities at sub-national, national and global levels.