Guest editors Claudia Olivier and Sarah Scholl-Schneider invite you to submit proposal abstracts for the focus topic “Transnational Return? Family Constellations, Expectations and Negotiations in Remigration” of the journal Transnational Social Review – A Social Work Journal (TSR).
Research Interest
“Remigration” describes the part of the migration process in which a return usually (but not only) to an origin context takes place, in either a narrow or wider sense of return. Remigration can take different forms, such as co-ethnic returns, ancestral and roots migration, deportation and retirement migration. It can be intended from the beginning, can occur spontaneously or be forced, and can have diverse patterns (permanent, long-term or short-term, such as return visits and other trips). Remigration may be a final step, but it can also be shaped by mobility patterns, e.g. in the form of another re-emigration following remigration. In general, remigration and migration processes have the same potential impetus (e.g. financial and/or social factors) and space-time dimensions, though additional factors might also be involved, such as the wish to contribute to changes in the country of origin after a politically motivated emigration or simply nostalgia.
Beside the motives and the direction, the social space also plays a central role in remigration, as constructions like ethnicity, belongings, roots and home are used to express the familiarity of, as well as the biographical and historical connections to, the space and place. In contrast to emigration, which is shaped by the pathway to a new land through new, unknown and risky elements, return is associated with no danger, a well-known mark, with reunion and the readmission into the family (Salaff/Chang 2012). However, those connections previously interpreted as natural between person, cultures and countries are increasingly challenged, because return is not just a recurrence to the provenance; rather, it is shaped though internal changes by new negotiations of feelings, belongings, role models and expectations (Cassarino 2004; De Bree 2007). Neither the remigrants and the country of origin, nor the left-behinds stayed the same. Socio-cultural differences and another national conditioning are challenging the remigrants and their newly acquired skills, behaviors, values, norms, belongings and identities. They are thus forced to deal with their “transnational knowledge” and to redefine the meaning of home and homeland (Olivier 2014). As a result, some actors describe the return as being even more difficult than the emigration (Markowitz/Stefansson 2004, Scholl-Schneider 2011). Therefore, return is not only shaped by physical mobility over national borders, but also by cultural, ethnic and generational border crossings. Spatial, social and cultural boundaries are being crossed, shifted and thereby newly composed. Those boundary crossings get visible in the interaction with the social environment, especially in the context of the family.
We use the concept of “transnational return” to highlight such social boundary work in remigration processes. The concept describes the fact that return is a reencounter with a social context and a reference system, which one already knows in a former shape and in which transnational patterns in particular are challenged through recontextualisations of family systems. However, these challenges in the family context have not been adequately examined up to now, including the question of the role played by family in the process of remigration. The focus on the family thus enables us to broaden the current literature focus on remigrants and include other positions from diverse family members situated in the country of origin or abroad. Thereby we aim to deconstruct the understanding of family as a discrete institution by highlighting the establishment, sense-making, self-definition and daily lifeworlds of this particular group via the concept of “doing family” (Jurczyk/Lange 2014).
In the focus topic “Transnational Return? Family Constellations, Expectations and Negotiations in Remigration”, we wish to focus on the role of the family in return migration. Specifically, we wish to address the significance of family, the different family constellations and expectations, and also to highlight the manners, negotiation patterns and social practices of the actors involved.
We invite papers that contribute to an analysis of the reciprocal relationship between remigration and family and which focus on (but may not be limited to) one or more of the following questions:
- What circular exchange processes, role assignments and tensions occur through remigration in family systems?
- What kind of family constellations motivate or inhibit remigration (e.g. family reunion, transnational families, local unification of the nuclear family and the family-of-origin, generational new compositions within the return of second/third generation)?
- Is return the beginning or the end of transnational family constellations and how does the transition take place?
- Does return contribute to diversification and innovation within families?
- What meaning is assigned to the place, physical co-presence and social spatial proximity? What supportive and strained elements can be observed?
- How does the migration experience get inscribed in the family biography? How does it find its place in the family memory after the return (e. g. photo albums, anniversaries, foreign names for children)?
Such questions highlight the meaning of family systems in remigration and the impacts remigration has on family systems. In addition, we also invite examinations of related topics such as family and education policies, religion, gender and demographic aspects. Against this broad background, we invite proposals for articles that discuss the field of family and return migration theoretically and/or empirically.
Requirements for Submissions
Each proposal abstract should contain no more than 500 words and should address the following: background of the proposed article, content outline and main discussion points.
For those proposals that are accepted, the deadline for submission of full articles is June 15, 2015. The deadlines for the TSR issue focused on “Transnational Return? Family constellations, expectations and negotiations in return migration” are:
June 15, 2015 Submission of proposal abstracts
September 30, 2015 Submission of full articles
October – December 2015 Peer review
January – March 2016 Revision of articles, if necessary
March 31, 2016 Final submission of publishable articles
June 2016 Publication
Articles should be up to 8,000 words in length. The authors are responsible for submitting proofread and anonymized manuscripts. The instructions for authors are available at:
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rtsr20&page=instructions#.U6gIxIRhCCghCCg
Contact
Inquiries and proposals should be sent to the guest editors via email:
Dr. Claudia Olivier
Postdoctoral Fellow
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Institute of Education – Social Pedagogy
Jakob-Welder-Weg 12
55099 Mainz, Germany
Email: olivier@uni-mainz.de
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Sarah Scholl-Schneider
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Department of Film, Drama, and Empirical Cultural Studies – Cultural Anthropology
Friedrich-von-Pfeiffer-Weg 12
55099 Mainz, Germany
Email: scholl-schneider@uni-mainz.de
For more information on the journal TSR, please visit the homepage: www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtsr20
Bibliography
Cassarino, J.-P. (2004): Theorising return migration: The conceptual approach to return migrants revisited. In: International Journal on Multicultural Societies 6 (2), p. 253-279.
De Bree, J. (2007): Belonging, transnationalism and embedding: Dutch Moroccan return migrants in Northeast Morocco. Nijmenegen: Radboud University Nijmegen.
Jurczyk, K./Lang, A. (2014): Doing Family: Warum Familienleben heute nicht mehr selbstverständlich ist. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa.
Olivier, C. (2014): TransREmigration. Eine transnationale Perspektive Sozialer Arbeit auf Rückkehr. Cumulative dissertation. Fachbereich 02 – Sozialwissenschaften, Medien und Sport der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
Salaff, J. W./Chang, E. (2012): Paths to return: Social networks and family relations in return migration. In: Daniere, A. G./Luong, H. V. (eds.): Vibrant societies: The dynamics of social capital and civic engagement in Asia. London: Routledge.
Scholl-Schneider, S. (2011): Mittler zwischen Kulturen. Biographische Erfahrungen tschechischer Remigranten nach 1989. Münster/New York/München/Berlin: Waxmann.
Markowitz, F./Stefansson, A.- H. (2004): Homecomings: Unsettling Paths of Return. Lanham: Lexington Books.