Saleh, an Egyptian researcher from Alexandria works at a human rights advocacy organization in Tunis, his work is dedicated to Libya, and not Egypt (Unlike the rest of his colleagues). I was very curious as to why. He said, because there is hope for Libya, unlike Egypt. He asks, why work on a hopeless case? What about Mexico, I asked? Why not work on Mexico? Would it be the same? He was taken aback by my question. “No, of course not! I care about the region!” In this paper, I seek to understand the making of “the region” ethnographically, namely Middle East and/or North Africa by following people who move and work “regionally” and remake the region in the process. My research follows organizations that set up shop in Tunisia but work on Egypt or Libya. I ask: how does their presence and work in Tunis contribute to remaking the idea of the region of the Middle East and North Africa? How does this in turn affect ideas and loyalties that extend beyond the nation-state, but still are a part of a historically constituted region? True, their work is of a transnational nature, most of them have colleagues based in European cities, but it is rooted in a particular city. A city with particular connections to other cities. However, I choose not to adopt a transnational framework championing “international citizens,” as was advocated by anthropologists such as Aihwa Ong and philosophers such Martha Naussbaum. Rather, I ask what does it mean to adopt a regional approach? What are the consequences of this approach? Mobility in postcolonial North Africa is guarded by borders, with visas that can be harder to obtain than a U.S visa. That said, the notion of an imagined border of a broader region needs examination. My interlocutors are unexpectedly revisiting and remaking a region inscribed in Islamic, African, and Arab history. The postcolonial period was assumed to supersede regional frameworks with nation-states. Against this backdrop, I will analyze experiences of mobility outside nation-states, but still within a “region,” and ask how this impacts on our understanding of imagined communities that are “Arab”, “North African” or “Middle Eastern.”