Call for Papers: Special Issue – Digital Inclusion and refugee and migrant women’s experiences
This special issue seeks to address the societal challenges in relation to digital inclusion faced by migrant and refugee women as this is a group that is disproportionately affected by intersecting forms of exclusion and marginalization.
While digital technologies offer many opportunities for social participation, economic empowerment, and access to (government) services, migrant and refugee women often encounter significant barriers. These include limited digital literacy, unequal access to technologies or not having autonomous access that strengthen existing inequalities. Despite a growing body of research on digital inequalities, research and policies often overlook the gendered dimensions of digital exclusion leaving an important gap both in scholarship and practice. By bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, this special issue aims to contribute to closing of this gap by mapping the problems faced by refugee and migrant women in digital environments through empirical studies that bring their experiences to the fore and also discuss possible solutions that center their experiences and needs. Topics covered include:
- Lack of autonomy for accessing devices
- Digital skills among migrant and refugee women
- Labour integration and digital inequalities
- Lack of access to the labour market
- Gender roles in digital care and digital parenting
- Technology-facilitated domestic violence
- Women doing the unwanted jobs in the Gig economy
- Barriers: First level of the Digital Divide: no access to computers
- Education: Barriers and Opportunities in a Digital Society
The special issue proposal will be submitted to the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies. If the proposal is accepted, the full papers should be submitted to the journal by the end of 2026.
Please submit an abstract of 150 words by 20. January 2026 with a short bio of 100 words to the special issue editors Noemi Mena Montes (noemi.menamontes@ru.nl) and Çiğdem Bozdağ (c.bozdag@rug.nl).