The UNRWA definition of a Palestinian refugee as a person “whose normal residence was Palestine for a minimum of two years preceding the outbreak of the conflict in 1948 and who, as a result of this conflict, has lost both his home and means of livelihood” is an operational one, meant to identify those persons eligible for assistance and not to declare anything about the political meaning of refugee status. Refugees, though, have seen political implications of this identification from the outset. In the absence of any other mechanism to make their claims to their homes and other rights, recognition as a refugee has taken on tremendous importance. It is for this reason that UNRWA officials noted in 1956 that “the Agency’s ration card was regarded by refugees as their only evidence of refugee status.” In this paper I will explore the intersection of humanitarian procedure and Palestinian political demands around the question of the identification and categorization of refugees. The paper will focus on the 1950s and 1960s, the Agency’s formative years. Drawing on the rich documentary sources of the UNRWA archives, the paper will explore the move from a simple binary categorization of people (eligible for registration or not) to a proliferation of distinctions within the category of registered refugee. While UNRWA’s documentation highlights the administrative procedures by which these categories were elaborated and people properly slotted into them, it also records “refugee thinking” and “requests from refugees.” Reading these different sorts of documents against each other, the paper will seek to understand and describe a field of contestation over the meaning of refugee status. The proliferation of categories is both evidence of these contests and a means of responding to them. The paper will also reflect on what guidance these earlier histories may provide for Agency practice in the future.