Call for papers: Migration in Media Histories
Abstract submissions are due on 1 November 2024.
Migration is one of the most contested and politically charged issues of our times. Referring to a range of experiences, migration entails forms of exile, diaspora, labor migration, refugee experiences, human trafficking, and other forms of human displacement due to economic, political, or global forces. In our current “age of migration” (De Haas, Castles, and Miller 2019; De Haas 2023), the global political landscape is seeing the rise of populist, right-wing or alt-right movements with nationalist, anti-immigration agendas. The political debates on migration are fuelled by a seemingly endless array of images, frames, and narratives provided and reproduced by television, film, and radio, and other (online/social) media platforms. At the same time, these media platforms are also the site of counter-narratives and political activism. Historicizing the entanglement of media and migration thereby becomes indispensable.
The field of media and migration studies has become an interdisciplinary research area where different approaches and methodologies meet (Smets et al. 2020). What binds these approaches, is that migration and mediation are inherently linked. Media are used as tools for migration, in terms of visualization, imagination, and communication. From mediascapes and shared imaginaries on the move (Appadurai 1996), to the notion of “migrant polymedia” (Madianou and Miller 2012) and the “connected migrant” (Diminescu 2012), research into digital diasporas and digital migration studies have become important pillars into conceptualizing the intersection of media and migration in contemporary society (e.g. Leurs 2015; Leurs and Smets 2018; Leurs and Ponzanesi 2024). Alongside this field of digital migration studies, a lot of scholarly work has been done on media representation and framing of migration in print media and audio-visual forms of journalism (e.g. Van Gorp 2006, Georgiou and Zaborowski 2017, Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017). In the study of film and television, migration has been particularly linked to accented cinema, postcolonialism, cosmopolitanism, border imaginations or borderscapes, and diasporic and immigrant filmmaking (e.g. Naficy 2001; Loshitzky 2020; Ponzanesi 2011; Berghahn and Sternberg 2014; Mendes and Sundholm 2015; Andersson and Sundholm 2019, Denić 2023,2024). Studies in transnational radio and podcasting confirm how sound plays a crucial role in migrant communities and the diasporic mediascape (e.g. Vrikki and Malik 2019; McHugh 2022; MacLennan and Biswas 2023).
Within this increasingly significant body of work on migration and media, a profound historical approach is still rather underdeveloped. While many studies focus on recent representations of migration in the media, fewer studies analyze media representations of migration over time (e.g. Beckers and Van Aelst, 2019; Meuzelaar, 2014, 2021). Such studies show that historicizing of media narratives of migration and paying attention to wider temporalities can help to understand the emergence and persistence of (stereotypical) stories and images of migration, and to recognize the historical roots of contemporary media discourse of migration. Recent studies show that the rise of computational approaches offers promising opportunities for historical, cross-media, and systematic longitudinal research on media and migration (e.g. Viola and Verheul 2020; Taylor 2021; de Keulenaar et al. 2024). Another productive line of historical research on media and migration revolves around archives and mediated memories of migration. Various scholars engage with (marginalized) audiovisual collections, and study the archival representation of migrant communities, and the systematic underrepresentation of these groups from heritage (e.g. El-Tayeb 2004; Brunow 2017; Siegenthaler and Bublatzky 2021; Özgen 2023, 2024). Others seek to examine the remediation of archival footage of migration to demonstrate how media re-narrativize migration, and how media make (counterhegemonic) use of mediated migratory memories in contemporary productions (Brunow 2015; Meuzelaar 2015, 2016, 2023; Seuferling 2017; Wagner and Seuferling 2020). Besides, scholarly work focuses on the history of multicultural programming in European broadcasting (Leurdijk 2006; Malik 2010). And finally, scholars are invested in historically-informed inquiries of media technology and media use across migration contexts (Leurs and Seuferling 2021, 2022; Seuferling 2020, 2021, 2024).
This special issue of TMG Journal for Media History seeks to further these promising avenues of historical research on the topic of media and migration. We welcome a variety of disciplines and approaches to realise our ambition to present unfamiliar histories of media and migration. We hence invite empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions addressing the following topics as well as other topics within the field of media and migration studies:
- Media representation/framing of migration
- Migration and the archive
- Mediated migration memories
- Histories of diasporic/migrant media production
- Histories of migrant media use/ tactics of self-representation/ media activism
- Encounters of cultural differences in film and television
- Historical perspectives on media framing of refugee/ asylum ‘crises’
- Comparison of media representation of migration in two or more crises/eras
- Histories of border imaginations
- Histories of media technology/ infrastructure in migration contexts
- Programming for diasporic communities
- Media ethics of migration
Submission guidelines
Contributions should be in English. Abstracts should present the main research question(s), scientific literature, method, and case study the authors plan to use. They should not exceed 500 words. Please submit your abstract and a short bio to: Dr. Andrea Meuzelaar at the University of Amsterdam: a.meuzelaar@uva.nl. Abstract submissions are due on 1 November 2024.
Selected authors shall be invited to submit an article of 6000-8000 words (including notes). Final acceptance depends on a double-blind peer review process of the manuscripts. Deadline for the manuscript is on 1 April 2025. Revised drafts are expected by 1 September 2025. The issue will be published Fall 2025. If you have questions, please contact the editors of the special issue, dr. Gert Jan Harkema (g.j.harkema@uva.nl) and dr. Andrea Meuzelaar (a.meuzelaar@uva.nl)