States across the Global South have witnessed historic privatization of their migration systems over the last few decades. This article explores the cultural and cognitive processes through which migrants make sense of and navigate a broker‐centric migration system. Based on 224 interviews and 15 months of fieldwork across Vietnam—a country whose migration system is reliant on migrant brokers—this article examines how migrants develop and deploy broker wisdom, a unique cultural schema, where migrants refashion migrant brokerage activity to be more legible and subsequently manipulable. I first show how migrants mobilize distinct forms of everyday resistance to make sense of and navigate migrant brokerage. I then explore how the development and deployment of broker wisdom have implications for migrant brokerage and Vietnam's broader migration project. This article contributes to international migration, economic sociology, social movements, cultural sociology, and labor scholarships.