The children of Afghan refugees provide important insight into the way that universities can be crucial sites of racial formation. This chapter explores how second-generation Afghan American college students navigate their racial and ethnic identities and build community on a college campus. The results are drawn from a qualitative study conducted at George Mason University, located in Northern Virginia, which is home to one of the largest Afghan diaspora populations in the country. Findings revealed the disparate impact that the withdrawal of the US military and subsequent arrival of tens of thousands of Afghan refugees into the United States had on students, the role of family and collectivist culture in their decision-making, how ethnic student organizations were a method of ethnic preservation and co-ethnic support, and how attending a university with a large Afghan student population exposed internal conflicts within the community. This chapter provides important insight for universities aiming to create inclusive environments and support the diverse experiences of second-generation immigrants, Muslim, and Afghan American students.

This chapter – offered by the co-editors – situates the need for “Supporting College Students of Immigrant Origin: New Insights from Research, Policy, and Practice” in both historical and contemporary social, political, and cultural contexts. It also offers a blueprint for how a range of higher education stakeholders can engage with the volume and its individual chapters, which are organized into four distinct parts that chronologically trace students of immigrant origin’s journeys as they relate to higher education.

Immigrant college students represent a diverse population across the United States. In this chapter, Michelle Leao and Stephen John Quaye engage in a quest to use our own immigrant stories to enrich the larger narrative of immigrant college students in the United States. We utilized a duoethnography to capture our higher education experiences through our undergraduate and graduate experiences. From our conversations, we focus on four themes: studying people around us, assimilating and fitting in, using our accent and language, and developing our immigrant identities. With those themes in mind, we close by offering recommendations for policy and practice to support immigrant college students.