ABSTRACT
The formulation and implementation of federal refugee policy is conditioned by, and has pronounced effects upon, the structures and relations of kinship among Southeast Asian refugees. This is particularly true of three core policy issues. First, the federal government is explicitly committed to facilitating the rapid economic self-sufficiency of refugees, and must therefore be cognizant of the ways in which this process is the function of joint strategies on the part of sets of kin, particularly those within a household. Second, the federal government has, or is considered to have, responsibility for the geographic and residential distribution of refugees within the United States. Any attempts to control or guide this distribution must inevitably confront the social, often kin-based, dynamics of initial resettlement, and subsequent, so-called secondary migration of refugees. Third, the government has shown an increasing interest in the importance of ethnic communities and self-help organizations in the resettlement process, and must therefore possess an understanding of the kinds of kinship links that are core to such collectivities.
