CfP: Religion and Gender in Migration to and from Central and Eastern Europe

CALL FOR PAPERS

Religion and Gender in Migration to and from Central and Eastern Europe

Guest editors:

Katarzyna Leszczyńska, Faculty of Humanities, AGH University of Science and Technology

Sylwia Urbańska, Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw

Katarzyna Zielińska, Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University

Despite the dynamic development of migration studies in recent decades, the interplay between gender and religion in their impact on migratory processes and related social phenomena has not so far become a subject of systematic and in-depth research and reflection. This omission can be traced back to the fact that both gender and religion were ‘latecomers’ to the field of migration studies, because they became a subject of systematic analysis only in the 1980s. At the same time, questions relating to interactions between gender, religion and migration are becoming more and more pressing in the light of growing glocalisation and transnationalism, and dramatically intensifying migratory processes, especially migration of persons seeking refugee status from wars and social conflicts. The existing gap in research results in a lack of systematic knowledge of how gendered religious identities and practices as well as religious culture, institutions, and organisations shape migration flows, motivations, migrant diversified activities and migration regimes.

The proposed Special Issue aims at filling this gap in the existing research. Moreover, due to the peculiarity of the CEE region, we regard the question of the interplay between gender, religion and migration as being particularly interesting. The culture of most CEE countries, despite post-socialist socioeconomic and political transformations and social change resulting from mass migration, can still be characterised as homogeneous and attached to traditional, conservative gendered values. This conservative shade of the culture is often further strengthened by the influential public role of religion (e.g. the high status and power of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland or Orthodox Church in Romania) and by the low level of secularisation (i.e. prevalence of religious practices and beliefs, support for conservative social values).

The Special Issue will focus on the following topics and general research questions:

  1. How does the interplay between gender and religion influence the migratory experience? How does religion shape the individual and collective experience of migrants, in particular, with regard to the formation of their gendered social, class, ethnic, civic and work identities and practices? How do various religious traditions construct and reproduce the gender rules in the symbolic, institutional and experiential dimensions of migration?
  2. How does the activity of religious organisations and their personnel contribute to creation of various forms of capital supporting (or inhibiting) migrants’ adaptation, integration, and multicultural identity? How do religious organisations mediate migrants’ adaptation to their new social conditions? How do religious organisations form bonds and networks of relationships between the cultures of the country of origin and country of settlement?
  3. 3. How (if at all) do the gender patterns and identities embedded in religious organisations transform in various migratory contexts? In which directions do the institutional rules concerning the place of men and women characteristic of conservative gender orders change as a consequence of migration involving encounters with multicultural and secular socio-cultural environments as well as with more conservative ones?

We also invite contributions focusing on other topics related to the interaction between religion, gender and migration, because the main purpose of this Special Issue is to show the recent developments in research on this broad topic in the context of migration to and from the CEE region.

Submission guidelines and related deadlines:

Extended deadline: 10 February 2017 – submission of abstracts

30 April 2017 – submission of articles

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent to: ceemr@uw.edu.pl.

Please note that each article will be subject to a double-blind peer review process and positive reviews will be a condition for the publication.

Guidelines for submission can be found at: http://www.ceemr.uw.edu.pl/sites/default/files/Instructions_to_authors_5.07.2013_final_2.pdf.

For more information on the Central and Eastern European Migration Review, please visit http://www.ceemr.uw.edu.pl.