This paper presents a postcolonial analysis of the role played by local IOM staff in the state-building work in Djibouti, a small state in the Horn of Africa. It argues that the way IOM constructs the role of the local staff reduces the asymmetric nature of its intervention, playing a crucial role in the organisation’s state-building objectives. The data is analysed using the ’subaltern standpoint’ method and 'postcolonial relationalism’ theory. The ethnographic description that follows details how the division of labour between local and international staff aligns with IOM’s historical goal of creating a world composed of separate, racially and culturally homogeneous nation-states. It explores how this division between local and international staff shapes the local staff’s national identity and seemingly enhances their sovereign power while giving the IOM foreign intervention into state migration policies the face of endogenous dynamics.