The guest editors of a forthcoming special journal issue to be published in Migration Letters invite interested researchers to submit manuscripts for an issue titled ‘Transnational Migrant Families: Navigating Social Fields, Family Practices, and Generational Experiences’
This special issue focuses on ‘transnational migrant family life.’ We examine different aspects of these lives such as marriage practices, polygamy in transnational context, the role of religiosity in transnational family life, transnational childcare and socialization, the ties and experiences of second generation migrants vis-à-vis their countries of origin, and the construction and management of transnational family life in legal discourses (including religious laws) and institutions. Rather than taking transnational migrant families as a given, we will examine how these families are constituted through actively produced transnational relations and practices as well as through legal and political regimes. We will examine the central theme from three dimensions. First, we will critically examine the different social fields in which transnational family life and relations are constituted and contested. Secondly, we will shed light on the heterogeneity of experiences and aspirations of family members constituting transnational kinship-based networks, particularly along the axes of gender and generation. Third, this issue will shed light on the range and diversity of transnational family practices and their multidimensional purposes and outcomes.
We are interested in soliciting article manuscripts, maximum 4000 words (excluding abstract and references), which tackle the broad theme of transnational migrant families, and which supplement or add other dimensions to the aspects of the transnational family life that we are covering. We are particularly interested in manuscripts based on empirical research on transnational migrant families based in Europe and/or North America with family backgrounds in Africa, South Asia, and/or the Middle East.
Kindly send an abstract to the guest editors by October 26, 2015. Deadline for submission of manuscripts is December 31, 2015.
Guest editors: Mulki Al-Sharmani: Mulki.al-sharmani@helsinki.fi
Marja Tiilikainen: Marja.tiilikainen@helsinki.fi
Sanna Mustasaari: sanna.mustasaari@helsinki.fi