Guest editors Caroline Schmitt, Linda L. Semu and Matthias D. Witte invite you to submit proposal abstracts on the focus topic “Racism and Transnationality” to be published in Transnational Social Review – A Social Work Journal.
Research Interest
In many countries, right-wing parties such as French National Front (FN) in France or Alternative for Germany (AFD) in Germany, racist movements, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism are on the rise. In the U.S. ongoing discussions about racist discrimination of Black people got stoked up with critical fatal shootings from White policemen against Blacks. The rejection of refugees and attacks on refugee accommodations in Europe henpeck the political discussions and media attention. Questions such as “who belongs to a nation, who is welcome and who is not?” are discussed with great commotion of the population, who controversially argues about “nation-state cultures” and people supposed to be “the others”. These developments take place simultaneously in different countries – and should be taken into account in their interweaving, e.g. if transnational networks exist between racist movements in different countries. The coincidences of various racist discourses and attacks raise up the question how racial ideologies and practices spread, interact and transform across territorial borders and growing parts of society. At the same time, such developments encounter various resistance and protest of civil society and professionals engaged in anti-racist issues.
Race is a social construct, which distinguishes between people and groups on the basis of given or constructed differences. It ascribes difference to supposedly biological lineages of humans and/or perceived cultural varieties. Differences are maximized and essentialized creating positions of an “us” and a “them”. This binary group structure leads to a hierarchy that positions one group as superior over the inferior “other” group. Racism is not only limited to the individual level, but is institutionally and linguistically incorporated into societal structures. While mechanisms and categorization processes of racism are topics of interdisciplinary research, racism is only rarely discussed in its transnational dimensions.
This special issue on “Racism and Transnationality” aims to further pry this desideratum and to capture worldwide dynamics related to racism. It seeks to give an insight into trends and
developments in different countries, and into forms of racism, which interact, transcend and transform across territorial borders. A transnational perspective on racism faces precisely on those translation processes, which emerge over time and space in different contexts.
We invite both empirical and theoretical papers, which focus on (but may not be limited to) one or more of the following questions:
- Racism across borders: How do ideologies of racism spread worldwide, cross (national) borders and endure or even refine? How do processes of racialization interact with categories such as nationality, ethnicity, class, gender, disability, or religion?
- Ambivalences in a transnationalized world: How is the resurgence of anti-immigrant nationalist and populist political movements in different countries related to an increasing globalization – with its free-flow of knowledge and capital on one side and the simultaneous limitation of people’s movements on the other side?
- Forms of racism in transnational networks: Which forms of racism get promoted by racist movements and collectives? Where can we observe historical pathways and where and how does racism transform itself? Which kind of transnational networking exists between racist movements and how do these networks advance the upturn of racism as societal figure?
- Anti-racist engagement: As a way out of racism, which different anti-racist-approaches exist and which requirements do they impose upon social work?
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 January 23 2017. The deadlines for the TSR issue focusing on “Racism and Transnationality” are:
October 15 2016: Submission of proposal abstracts
January 23 2017: Submission of full articles
February – April 2017: Peer review
April – June 2017: Revision of articles, if necessary
June 5 2017: Final submission of publishable articles
September 2017: 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 here.
For more information on the journal TSR, please visit the homepage.
Contact
Inquiries and proposals should be sent to the guest editors via email:
- Guest Editor: Caroline Schmitt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) - Guest Editor: Linda L. Semu, McDaniel College Westminster (
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) - Guest Editor: Matthias D. Witte, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )