On February 3, 2017 the EU and the UN-backed Libyan government agreed to a deal whereby Libya would prevent irregular migration to Europe, establish temporary refugee within its borders to screen asylum-seekers, and ‘voluntarily’ repatriate refugees wiling to return to their countries of origin. In exchange, EU funding would be used to support Libya’s struggling coastguard. The deal overlooked gross human rights violations toward migrants in Libya that have been documented by international organizations (UNICEF 2017), as well as previous violent and deadly actions taken by the Libyan navy in violation of international law (BBC 2016), not to mention Libya’s lack of a functioning or cohesive government. The EU-Libya deal has received significant criticism from UN experts and human rights organizations (OHCHR 2017), especially after it was reported that EU-funding was used to fund a Libyan militia commander to combat irregular migration in exchange for cars, boats and the recognition of his force as a legitimate security body (Trew, Abdullah, and Kington 2017). Yet despite objections, the deal has been touted by European leaders as a success and a model to be emulated elsewhere. Agreements between European countries and migrant or refugee host states in the Middle East and North Africa are not new: the European Union and individual states have used the incentive of increased trade and visa access to compel neighboring Eastern European and North African countries to adopt policing measures and border controls to prevent migration over the last two decades. Yet in the wake of the 2015 European refugee ‘crisis,’ the stakes and power (im)balances between unwilling receiving countries in Europe and host countries of the Middle East have been renegotiated and reconstituted (Arar 2016). Drawing upon primary research in Egypt, Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon as well as recent policy documents and non-governmental reports, this paper uses a ‘migration diplomacy’ lens to examine and understand the new migration paradigm in the Mediterranean region as a whole. It provides insight into what a new paradigm means for MENA host states regarding economic, diplomatic, and security concerns, as well as the consequences for individual migrants and refugees at the heart of a new migration management regime.