Refugees in Newfoundland: Families After Flight

Based upon field work conducted in 1987 among Eastern European, Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, and Central American refugees in St. John’s Newfoundland, I attempt an exploratory cross-cultural analysis of the ways in which refugees thinking about "family" differs from that of more ordinary immigrants. Special emphasis is given to the ordeal of clandestine departure; the guilt of refugee ideologues as compared with the lack of it among persons fleeing from direct persecution; the breaking apart and coming together again; and the issue of dependency and the paucity of familial or ethnic resources.