Martinez presented his research about religious culture and immigration

Juan Martinez, North Central College visiting assistant professor of sociology, presented a paper titled “Joseph and Mary Participated in The Census: Religion and Undocumented Immigrant Substantive Citizenship” as part of a panel, Progressive Religion in the United States: Remapping the Political Landscape, at the 2013 annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion held Nov. 8-10 in Boston. The paper he presented was in the academic intersection of religious studies, sociology, and immigration discourse.

His research examined how social movement organizations employ religious culture to foster undocumented immigrant substantive citizenship by framing undocumented immigrants as “ideal” citizens and to encourage immigrant civic participation in the United States. The findings are the result of more than five years of ethnographic fieldwork in the U.S. Midwest.

Martinez started teaching at North Central in 2013. He earned his B.A. from Northern Illinois University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago.