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"This whole concept of illegality again is really problematic because it really doesn't go to the complexities of the situation."
- Manuel Vásquez
Manuel Vásquez
Head of the CLAS
Professor of Religion Manuel Vásquez sat down with Bill Moyers to discuss immigration in America. The conversation will air on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS on Nov. 16 at 9 p.m. Following is a write-up from Bill Moyers. For more information about the broadcast, visit the Moyers Website at pbs.org.
Manuel Vásquez, born in El Salvador, is an associate professor of religion at the University of Florida in Gainesville, specializing in the ways in which Latino immigration affects American communities.
In his studies, Vásquez has focused upon a growing sense of transnationalism among immigrant populations. "Today's immigrants are able to have dual loyalties," he explains to Bill Moyers. "That it's not one or the other, but that one can have roots in the country of settlement, but also one can still have ties with your home country."
His current project, a three-year-long Ford Foundation study entitled, "Latino Immigrants in the New South," examines the migration experiences and religious lives of Guatemalans, Mexicans and Brazilians in and around the Atlanta metropolitan area. He calls this form of study, the "politics of encounter" or "what happens when you have immigrants coming in, changing the racial dynamics of a particular place."
His recent publications include Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas (Rutgers University Press, 2003), which he co-authored with Marie Friedmann Marquardt, and Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America (AltaMira 2005), co-edited with Karen Leonard, Alex Stepick, and Jennifer Holdaway.
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Buffy Lockette