Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is a professor of sociology at USC and the author of Gendered Transitions: Mexican Experiences of Immigration and Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (UC Press), which she will be discussing.

How can religion guide a more expansive, inclusive definition of who can belong to the nation? Hondagneu-Sotelo's book addresses this question based on an examination of how Muslim, Jewish and Christian activists rely on religion to challenge taken-for-granted definitions of migration and nation. The religious sector is an important part of the immigrant rights movement, and case studies of Muslim American immigrants struggling for civil rights, Jewish and Christian clergy and laity advocating for immigrant worker rights, and the Christian anti-borderism at the U.S.-Mexico border highlight the diverse ways in which religious language, moral authority, resources and symbols are used, or not used, to pursue social change.