In the first part of the twenty first century we have witnessed a large number of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and North Africa seeking refuge in Europe and beyond. While the wars and conflict in the region has been a main driver of displacement of people, the economic imperatives associated with the globalization project have also played an important role. The latter however has not been studied sufficiently to establish the links between forced displacement in the region and the globalization project’s main architects—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This paper seeks to examine the cases of four countries comparatively to explore whether economic reform policies of the period of liberalization (1980s-1990s) have contributed to the wave of migration from the MENA region. What this paper grapples with is seeking to understand the ways in which global power relations are reproduced through the production of dislocation and displacement of workers and peasants in the global south. Approaching the issue as such, forces us to center our analysis of the refugee/migrant crisis in the contemporary period not as a unidirectional phenomenon (from the global south to the global north) but as a closely linked product of global power relations and thus approach it through a global lens.