Call for Abstracts: Media and migration in times of crises

2023-09-12

Media and migration studies, and digital migration studies in particular (Leurs & Smets 2018; Smets et al. 2020, Leurs, 2023), have carved out an increasingly consolidated field. Building on these insights, this special issue emphasizes that migratory experiences and unfoldings are always already mediated: represented through media, and embedded in migrants’ media practices using digital (communication) technologies. Media not only set the frames of how crises are discursively constructed, perceived, and handled, but also how migration can be enacted and experienced via media, for example, by affecting decisions to migrate, possibilities of navigating routes, crossing technologized borders, maintaining communication across distances or diasporic communities, as well as through public representations and imaginations.

Moving away from seeing migration as an isolated event that constitutes a crisis in itself (De Genova 2018; Sahin-Mencutek et al. 2022), migration has been and is a constant phenomenon, often simultaneously occurring in times of crises (pandemic, global warming, natural disasters, war in Ukraine etc.) and thereby leading to new forms of media usage and media representations. We invite scholars to enlarge their perspectives by includling multiple crises as an alarming background to study how media usage and media dependency produce, affect and shape migration movements.

In this special issue, we explicitly draw attention to migrants’ media use, practices, and migrants’ media portrayal concerning a broader historical moment characterized by crises. We welcome theoretical, methodological, or empirical contributions addressing the following topics as well as other foci within the field of media and migration:

  •   Media practices, uses, and experiences among privileged, forced, economic migrants affected by multiple crises, such as the war in Ukraine during the Covid-19 pandemic
  •   Media use during climate-driven migration and political disruptions, disabling communication across distances, diasporic disconnections, impeded migration, etc.
  •   Mediating migrants’ social relations in sender and receiver countries
  •   Cross-national comparisons of governmental media practices in communicating migration during multiple simultaneous crises
  •   Media representations of migration
  •   Media as a connecting tool for remigration during crises
  •   Media and deportation
  •   Mediated experiences of family migration during crises
  •   Comparison of migration in two or more crises
  •   Withdrawal from media use during crises
  •   Media productions by migrants
  •   Research on artistic media practices among migrants
  •   Media activism among and for migrants
  •   Experiences of (im)mobility and inhibited mobility and their mediations during crises
  •   Media and affect during multiple crises
  •   Media and materiality in times of crisis
  •   Mediatization as a background to study media in crises situations
  •   Media technologies in the governance and management of migration and borders
  •   Challenges and innovations in the methodology of media and migration during crises

Submission guidelines

Abstracts should contain a maximum of 500 words excluding references. It should include the research question(s) addressed, theoretical and methodological approaches as well as preliminary conclusions. Abstracts should be submitted as a Word document via our open  journal system at https://tidsskrift.dk/mediekultur, where you will need to create a user account if you do not already have one. Please indicate in “comments for the editor” section that you are submitting to the special issue “Media and migration in times of crises”. In case of any questions regarding the uploading process, please contact: lynge@cc.au.dk or majanord@oslomet.no

Timeline

Deadline for abstract submission: November 1st, 2023

Acknowledgement of acceptance for full paper submission: November 23rd, 2023

Deadline for full paper: March 10th, 2024

Expected publication: Fall, 2024

 

Guest Editors

Jeannine Teichert, Paderborn University

Heike Graf, Södertörn University

Philipp Seuferling, LSE

Issue Editors

Maja Nordtug, Oslo Metropolitan University

Lynge Stegger Gemzøe, Aarhus University

 

References:

Leurs, K., & Smets, K. (2018). Five questions for digital migration studies: Learning from digital connectivity and forced migration in (to) Europe. Social Media+ Society, 4(1), 2056305118764425.

Smets, K. et. al. (2020). The Sage handbook of media and migration. Sage.

Leurs, K. (2023). Digital migration. Sage.

De Genova, N. (2018). ’The migrant crisis’ as racial crisis: Do Black Lives Matter in Europe?. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41, 1765–1782.

Sahin-Mencutek, Z., Barthoma, S., Gökalp-Aras, N. E., & Triandafyllidou, A. (2022). A crisis mode in migration governance: comparative and analytical insights. Comparative migration studies, 10(1), 12.