ABSTRACT
Nationality and the naturalization process may have once been the core of the western nation-state. Race and ethnic relations are more significant for the adaptation of contemporary immigrants. Yet the nation-state's interest in managing cultural pluralism is not isolated from the economic and fiscal interests of the welfare state. Where the welfare state determines the type of social citizens international migrants become, the nation-state patterns their formation of ethnic communities. At the local level, government officials and staff in nonprofit organizations encourage refugees to congregate and build ethnic institutions, believing that the practices were prerequisites for successful adaptation among European immigrants. An immigrant legacy extols the trauma of uprooting, the growth of ethnic communities, and eventual assimilation. Indochinese refugees' initial experiences in the US could have led refugee managers to conclude that they were becoming an ethnic minority. Funding policy also reveals that state governments showed great sensitivity to ethnic differences among Indochinese refugees.
