Julia Young

Department

  • History
  • School

  • School of Arts and Sciences
  • Expertise

  • Migration to the U.S.
  • Mexico
  • Latin America
  • Catholicism and Immigration
  • Cristero War (1926-1929)
  • Ethnicity and Diasporas
  • Languages

  • Spanish
  • Dr. Young is a historian of migration, Mexico and Latin America, and Catholicism in the Americas. Her prize-winning book, Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War (Oxford University Press, 2015), examines Mexican religious exiles, political refugees, and labor emigrants in the United States during Mexico’s Cristero war. She co-edited Local Church, Global Church: Catholic Activism in Latin America from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II (The Catholic University of America Press, 2015). She has published scholarly articles in The AmericasThe Catholic Historical ReviewMexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Modernism, and the Journal on Migration and Human Security. Dr. Young has been a fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, as well as the Institute for Policy Research at Catholic University. In 2020-2021, she was a fellow at the Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs. She is currently researching a new book about right-wing Catholicism in Mexico during the twentieth century, and she frequently writes for the media about immigration, border issues, and Catholic immigration history.

    PDF-logo.png  Click here for vita.

    Selected Publications

    • Local Church, Global Church

      Local Church, Global Church

      Stephen J.C. Andes and Julia G. Young, ed., Local Church, Global Church: Catholic Activism in Latin America from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II (The Catholic University of America Press, 2016)

      Learn More
    • Mexican Exodus

      Mexican Exodus

      Julia G. Young, Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War (Oxford University Press, 2015)

      Learn More

    "Making America 1920 Again? Nativism and US Immigration, Past and Present," Journal on Migration and Human Security 5:1, 2017.

    "The Calles Government and Catholic Dissidents: Mexico's Transnational Projects of Repression, 1926-1929," The Americas 70:1, July 2013.

    “A "Sorrowful Caravan"? Rhetoric vs. Reality in Mexico's Debate over Emigration, 1926-1929,” in Historia de la Migración Mexicana a Estados Unidos. Visiones Comparadas (Siglo XIX - 2012), eds. Rafael Alarcón and Fernando Saúl Alanis. México: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, El Colegio de San Luis, y El Colegio de Michoacán (forthcoming 2017).

    “Cristero Diaspora: Mexican Emigrants, the U.S. Catholic Church, and Mexico’s Cristero War, 1926-1929,” The Catholic Historical Review 98:2, April 2012.

    “Un obispo cristero en Estados Unidos: el exilio de José de Jesús Manríquez y Zárate, 1927-1932,” in Julia Preciado Zamora and Servando Ortoll, eds. Los guachos y los mochos: once ensayos cristeros (jitanjáfora Press, Morelia, 2009). 

    Media Publications

    Republicans want to use immigration policy to make America whiter. Here’s why they’re destined to fail - The Washington Post

    Mexican Migration History in the Era of Border Walls - AHA Today

    Latino Pentecostals in America - Commonweal

    The Church in Latin America: Can Francis Meet the Challenge? - Commonweal

    A Transplanted Faith: Catholicism in Latin America - Commonweal

    Smuggling for Christ the King - OUP Blog

    How Mexican Immigration to the United States has Evolved - Time.com

    Catholic Solidarity With Immigrants: Will the Laity Support the Bishops? - Commonweal