The "Nansen Passport" named for Norwegian diplomat and explorer Fridtjof Nansen, was initially developed to allow refugees of the Russian civil war some freedom of movement across borders. Nansen also brought this critical humanitarian-bureaucratic innovation to the Eastern Mediterranean where it provided stateless people a modicum of civil status. This paper tells the story of the passport to understand how the modern concept of the refugee evolved, and more to the point, the internationalizing of the refu- gee "problem." Understanding its theoretical and ideological origins and the role it played - as well as that of the Nansen International Office for Refugees -- sits at the center of this work. Using the case of deported Armenians in Syria, I use this paper to also think about "refugee-ness" as a modern concept and how international organiza-tions had begun to analyze its impact upon the family, commerce and culture; and moreover, how creating the concept of refugee became a way to facilitate the eviction of groups from newly formed nation states as a humanitarian act.