Daily Agenda & Panels

This panel examines how religious life shapes how migrant communities create meaning, identity, and collective existence across borders. The papers focus on how churches, community networks, and shared traditions act as spaces where newcomers seek recognition, build resilience, and navigate uneven social and political conditions.

Presenters:

Candace Lukasik (From Persecution to Politics: Minority Christianity and the Reconfiguration of Belonging)

Ana Vieytez (Immigrant Churches as Sites of Adaptable Political and Cultural Transformation: The Role of the Second-Generation)

Cori Tucker-Price (Sacred Claims: Faith, Migration, and the Making of Black Citizenship in World War II Los Angeles)

Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez (Citizenship at the Crossroads: Faith, Belonging, and Racialized Space in the Arizona–New Mexico Borderlands)

Kenicia Wright (Exploring the “Latino Paradox”: The importance of social capital on the health outcomes of Latinos)

This panel explores how factors such as race, religion, gender, and migration shape citizenship and a sense of democratic belonging. Through research conducted in the United States and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the papers demonstrate how narratives of nationhood, institutional power, and social hierarchies impact political attitudes, rights, and the experiences of individuals within a democracy.

Presenters: 

Eileen Díaz McConnell (“We get all kinds of people from different countries” but the U.S. is “not very kind to immigrants”: How Gen Z and Millennial Young Adults Accept and Contest the Metaphor)

Diana Orcés (Religion, Immigration Enforcement, and Democracy)

Anita Huizar-Hernandez (Contingent Catholic Modernity and Borderlands Citizenship: A Historical Perspective) 

José Múzquiz (Differential Impacts of Hostile and Benevolent Sexism on Abortion Attitudes by Race and Gender)

This panel investigates how religious expression intersects with migration governance, as well as with surveillance and classification systems. Through case studies that focus on embodied religious symbols, institutional practices, and legal frameworks, the papers highlight how spiritual identities can become areas of regulation, suspicion, and negotiation within modern migration regimes.

Presenters: 

Daisy Vargas (The Marked Catholic Body: Christian Nationalism, Migration, and Deportation)

Sujey Vega (Fotos y Recuerdos: Intimate Futures of Collected Pasts)

Samantha Chapa (Forms of Exclusion: An Examination of Administrative Burden on Applicants for U.S. Citizenship)

Melissa Guzman-Garcia (Citizenship Deferred? Mexican immigrant Families building Christian Futurities under Threat)

Leah Sarat (From Cotton Fields to Confinement: Migration, Incarceration, and Relationality in Eloy, Arizona)

This panel considers how religious individuals and communities respond to injustice through collective care, moral critique, and public advocacy. The papers discuss practices such as sanctuary, mutual aid, protest, and theological reflection, highlighting how these actions create alternative visions of justice and community during times of political tension.

Presenters: 

Alexandra Délano Alonso (Beyond citizenship: sanctuary, mutual aid and transformative solidarity)

Evan Berry (The Politics of Religious Freedom in an Era of Mass Deportation)

Rebecca Bartel (Fugitive Imaginaries: Re-worlding the Sacred in Migrant Detention)

Kiku Huckle (Can Immigration Bring the Church to Racial Justice?)

Iris Acquarone (Running in Context: Marginalization, Political Ambition, and Candidate Emergence)

This panel focuses on how place, environment, and historical memory shape religious interpretations of migration and displacement. Through studies of deserts, border regions, colonial religious spaces, and community histories, the papers reveal how landscapes become sites where spiritual meaning, identity, and the experience of movement intersect.

Presenters:

Alejandro Nava (Encountering God and Humanity in the Sonoran Desert)

JoAnna Reyes (The Jesuit Expulsion and Political Imaginaries in Late Colonial Zacatecas)

Tatyana Castillo-Ramos (Sacred (Re)Unions: Pilgrimages and Rituals in Friendship Park as Reclamations of Friendship in a Militarized Zone)

Rafael Martínez (Families on the Move: Migration, Memory, and the Politics of Belonging)

Edward Vargas (Latinos’ Connections to Immigrants: How Knowing a Deportee Impacts Latino Well-Being)

Conference organizers will discuss next steps for participants, with particular emphasis on opportunities for publication(s).

Presenters: 

Anita Huizar-Hernandez 

Stella Rouse 

Francisco Pedraza 

Benjamin Gonzalez O'Brien