[ecrea] CFP Gender, Migration and the Media

FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES

Commentary and Criticism: Call for Papers

*18.6 Gender, Migration, and the Media*

Contemporary Western mediascapes are overflowing with contradictory 
images of movement across borders. While goods and capital are cast as 
successfully and often innocently mobile in a world shaped by the 
triumphant discourse of globalization, human mass movement seems to 
encounter ever-increasing obstacles, from legal constraints to military 
prevention. In the context of what has become known as the recent 
“refugee crisis”, human migration fostered by warfare and socio-economic 
unbalances has become increasingly associated with powerlessness (a 
condition in which moving appears to be the only choice for survival) 
rather than with individual agency, which is regarded as the organizing 
principle for middle- and upper-class Western citizens relocating abroad.

While media coverage of “irregular crossings” in the Mediterranean has 
reached a fever pitch in Europe after the Arab Uprisings and since the 
outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the complex gendering of this mediatic 
narration has remained largely overlooked. In the contexts of 
generalized violence that migrants escape (and live through while 
migrating), women are typically subject to specific further abuse that 
is often structural and programmatic, and that tends to go 
underreported. On the other hand, Western news coverage is more likely 
to represent female (rather than male) refugees and migrants as hapless 
victims of a violence deemed endemic to their geographic, cultural, 
religious, and ethnic “origins”, thus fuelling racist political 
discourses on the “West and the rest”. As news coverage increasingly 
intersects literary and artistic production, mediatic (and mediated) 
discourses on migration thus appear more and more inescapably shaped by 
gender, both with regard to the authors/artists’ own gendered identities 
and in terms of their discursive choices in representing gendered 
experiences of border-crossing.

Who gains access to the means of cultural production? Who gets to tell 
their own stories or embarks on representing collective experiences? And 
how do the unequal relations of cultural production inform the Western 
casting of migrants as “victims” versus “willed individuals”, or “good” 
versus “dangerous” subjects? The patterns and dynamics of media and 
artistic production seen through the lenses of gender and race (as well 
as ethnicity and class) are crucial to a critical understanding of the 
contemporary Western discourse on migration. With this gender and 
migration-focused “Commentary and Criticism” issue, we hope to gather 
original contributions that tackle these important questions by looking 
for women’s voices, exploring how (and if) they are amplified, and who, 
in this case, hears them.

Contributions from a broad range of disciplines and theoretical 
approaches are encouraged, including those challenging the conventional 
borders among research fields and promoting dynamic interchange between 
critical reflection and creativity. Though we have privileged Europe and 
the Mediterranean in this narrative, we also welcome articles 
considering gender, media, and migration from other geographic spaces, 
comparative or otherwise. We are particularly interested in submissions 
from scholars beyond North America and the UK.

Submissions may address topics such as:

  * Gender and migration in the media
  * Gender and political/cultural citizenship
  * The gendering of asylum seekers in Western immigration policies
  * Gender in artistic and/or literary discourses on migration
  * “Subjects” and “objects” in storytelling by or about women migrants
  * Intra-European media coverage on migration
  * Social media and refugee narratives
  * Gendered migration routes

The “Commentary and Criticism” section of /Feminist Media Studies/ aims 
to publish brief (~1000 words), timely responses to current issues in 
feminist media culture, for an international readership. Submissions may 
pose a provocation, describe work in progress, or propose areas for 
future study. We encourage all submissions to strategically mobilize 
critique to also offer a productive contribution to both feminist 
politics and media studies. Submissions must go beyond mere description 
in order to be considered for publication in “Commentary and Criticism”.

Please submit contributions by *18 June 2018*, via email to both Mara 
Mattoscio ((mara.mattoscio /at/ gmail.com)) and Megan C. MacDonald 
((mgn.macdonald /at/ gmail.com)). Questions and expressions of interest can 
also be addressed to Drs. Mattoscio and MacDonald in advance of the 
deadline. Please note that submissions for “Commentary and Criticism” 
will not be correctly processed if submitted through the main /Feminist 
Media Studies/ site.

Submissions should follow the Feminist Media Studies style guide, which 
can be found at the following link: 
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rfms&page=instructions 


DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 18 June, 2018

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