Increased United States involvement in world affairs has been accompanied by an increase in the number of Americans living abroad in numerous American enclaves. Most of the commentary on such "overseas American communities" is impressionistic, superficial, and stereotyped, and tends to foster the notion that Americans are peculiarly ethnocentric. Such an assumption ignores the fact that whenever a fairly large number of persons from one country reside abroad, they tend to cluster into enclaves that provide havens from "culture shock." It is suggested that systematic, objective, and empirical descriptions of such communities could make a valuable contribution to the study of migration, acculturation, and communities in general. To that end, a frame of reference derived from past studies is proposed, both as a generic concept and a subcultural category. Data would be generated that would permit an analysis of the relationship between community characteristics and cross-cultural interaction and attitudes. (Author)