This week, we heard Professor Fernandez-Kelly and read her article “The Integration Paradox: Coping Strategies among Immigrant Children in the Age of Mass Deportations” (2019), leading us to focus on the ways in which immigrant children/students are able to exhibit positive behaviors despite discriminatory national immigration policy. In addition, Aptekar (2008) speaks to how immigrant groups like Asian Indians and Chinese possess educational and material prosperity, yet have difficulty integrating into the political landscape of their local communities. This article from Princeton University posted in 2018 speaks to these concepts as we try to observe local disagreement with national immigration policy and the effects it has on immigrant communities and their integration into local politics.
Princeton University’s involvement in the Supreme Court case against President Trump’s proclamation limiting migrants from Muslim-majority countries sparks questions about how Muslim immigrant students will integrate into the University. While Fernandez-Kelly found that immigrant students exhibit more positive behaviors in Trenton over Princeton, religion is now an element of this Supreme Court case. Fernandez-Kelly claims that a factor of Trenton immigrant children’s positive outlook is because of religious narratives crafted to explain overcoming struggles and circumstance. With the Trump administration proclamation isolating immigrants from Muslim-dominated countries, it would be interesting to discuss if/how Princeton’s support of Muslim immigrant students could foster cohesion among these immigrants, which could allow them to use their religious faith for a positive outlook. As the national government isolates groups and thereafter receives opposition from universities, it would be interesting to see how localities around the Universities that are not predominantly African American or Latino can still foster immigrant integration and political involvement using religious tolerance and acceptance.
I thought the juxtaposition of this article with Professor Fernández-Kelly’s presentation earlier this week raised some very interesting questions, as you noted. As I thought about how to evaluate Professor Fernández-Kelly’s criteria for positive outcomes (advocacy, material supports, tolerance), I was struck by how a college campus, and Princeton (as a school with a diverse international population) in particular is difficult to analyze. For instance, while reading the question you raised about whether Muslim students from majority-Muslim countries would find solace in their religion, I found myself wondering if/how students from these countries would find solidarity with Muslim students from other countries (including the US). Somewhat akin to how African-Americans and Latinos in Trenton have reportedly found a shared narrative of hardship that allows them to integrate with each other, could religion serve as a shared narrative for Muslim students at Princeton and other institutions, regardless of national origin? Similarly I wonder if the fact that (as far as I’m aware) the overall Muslim population of Princeton is fairly small would cause negative outlook, in the same way that Princeton town’s small Latino population may be partly responsible for negative outcomes for Latino immigrants.