Kinship Across Borders

Kinship Across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration - Talk and Book Signing with Kristin E. Heyer

“Kinship Across Borders presents a powerful analysis of the injustice of the current immigration system and an engaging alternative based on human solidarity and Christian commitment. It will inspire action that can make a difference.”

          —David Hollenbach, SJ, University Chair in Human Rights and International Justice, Boston College 

The failure of current immigration policies in the United States has resulted in dire consequences: a significant increase in border deaths, a proliferation of smuggling networks, prolonged family separation, inhumane raids, a patchwork of local ordinances criminalizing activities of immigrants and those who harbor them, and the creation of an underclass—none of which are appropriate or just outcomes for those holding Christian commitments. 

Kinship Across Borders analyzes contemporary US immigration in the context of fundamental Christian beliefs about the human person, sin, family life, and global solidarity. Kristin Heyer expertly demonstrates how current US immigration policies reflect harmful neoliberal economic priorities, and why immigration cannot be reduced to security or legal issues alone. Rather, she explains that immigration involves a broad array of economic issues, trade policies, concerns of cultural tolerance and criminal justice, and, at root, an understanding of the human person. 

In Kinship Across Borders, Heyer has developed a Christian immigration ethic—grounded in scriptural, anthropological, and social teachings and rooted in the experiences of undocumented migrants—that calls society to promote concrete practices and policies reflecting justice and solidarity. 

Kristin E. Heyer is Bernard J. Hanley Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. She is the author of Prophetic and Public: The Social Witness of US Catholicism, which won the College Theology Society’s Best Book Award, and coeditor of Catholics and Politics: Dynamic Tensions between Faith and Power.