International development cooperation, in particular German donor agencies, have supported Jordan to cope with the prolonged presence of around 670,000 Syrian refugees by establishing so-called Cash-for-Work (CfW) schemes. These public works programmes have recently been applied within the contexts of flight and forced migration as they not only deliver employment and income for vulnerable households as well as dearly needed public infrastructure. Rather, in addition to that, they are expected to unfold further positive effects for local communities, in terms of social cohesion, more equitable gender roles or local economic development. Yet, little scholarly attention has been paid so far at these “meso-level” effects at the scale of villages or neighbourhoods. The presented paper addresses this gap by applying a mixed-method approach, based on (i) 281 semi-structured interviews conducted in spring 2019 with CfW participants and non-participants at 9 CfW sites all over Jordan; (ii) 99 expert interviews at the local and national levels; and (iii) a quantitative census of all 1,847 participants in 2019 and 2020 in one specific CfW programme. Assessing the programmes’ effects on the different elements of social cohesion, we find that CfW indeed are able to strengthen the sense of belonging of Syrian refugees and native Jordanians of both genders as well as the horizontal trust between them. Furthermore, CfW contributes to women being more active members of society especially if CfW programmes explicitly target both genders and provide a work environment that is perceived as safe and suitable for women. CfW programmes affect vertical trust toward state institutions, however, in an ambiguous way because, in the absence of Jordanian authorities taking on complete ownership over the programmes, many Syrians and Jordanians attribute their positive effects to donor support rather than the commitment of local authorities. In sum, especially when factoring in community effects, CfW schemes in contexts of fragility and migration yield important results beyond providing social protection for individuals, but programme ownership and project design could yet be improved for more sustainable outcomes.