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‪The Syrian civil war has led to more than 6.8 million people fleeing Syria. Jordan has received the biggest number of Syrian refugees per capita, after Lebanon. In this article, authors take a retrospective look at how the Jordanian government adopted a new approach for hosting the Syrian population within the context of social and economic challenges. The authors draw on an exhaustive inventory of historical events, government decisions, and other grey literature, combined with key informant interviews. This article emphasizes the importance of considering a country’s legacy and the current socio-economic landscape when examining the migration-development ‪‪nexus‪‪. The article contends that the evolution of refugees management from “camps” to “integration” through a development approach did not follow a linear sequence; rather, it appears to have been strategically employed as a governance tool to attain political, economic, and humanitarian stability.‪