[Commlist] cfp: special issue "Migrations / Mediations. Promoting transcultural dialogue through media, arts and culture"

Call for papers
“Comunicazioni Sociali. Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural 
Studies”

Special Issue
Migrations / Mediations. Promoting transcultural dialogue through media, 
arts and culture
eds. Pierluigi Musarò, Nikos Papastergiadis, Laura Peja
(n. 1/2022, due in April 2022)



Migration has been a phenomenon throughout human history. However, as a 
result of economic hardship, conflict and globalization, the number of 
people now living outside their country of birth is higher than ever. It 
has also become a key focul point for the media. Even though irregular 
immigration constitutes only a minor part of the total immigrant 
population in the EU, it is the one most spectacularized by the media. 
This over-mediatization of the phenomenon leads to a consistent 
discrepancy between the perception and the reality of the issue, and 
this distance has favored the shift of migration issues from ‘low 
politics’ to ‘high politics’, fueling an emergency management and a 
securitarian approach.

We live in a deeply mediatized world. Media have an important role in 
influencing political attitudes and in framing public debates towards 
migration and asylum. In the last decade, the representation strategies 
and discursive practices enacted by a wide range of state and non-state 
actors have been presenting irregular migrants crossing borders as an 
‘emergency’ to be managed in terms of a wider social, cultural and 
political ‘crisis’. These media representations have outstripped the 
reality of the crisis. As a consequence, the public anxiety about 
migration and asylum-seeking in Europe, is increasingly shaped by the 
political rhetoric of Europe as being besieged by people fleeing 
conflict or seeking a better life. Institutional and political actors 
have stoked public anxieties and security concerns, endorsing emergency 
narratives, aggressive policing and militarized border control, which in 
turn has generated a fertile breeding ground for xenophobic, populist 
reactions.

On the other side, it is now widely recognized that culture, media and 
the arts have been transformed by migration and mobility. These recent 
cultural and aesthetic transformations have offered another way of 
seeing identity, politics and society. The EU Member States and the EU 
itself, have been summoned to meet these challenges. There has been 
growing recognition of the ways in which media, the arts and 
performative practices are able to facilitate intercultural dialogue 
among migrant and host communities – thereby empowering their 
participation in social life –, and to promote an understanding of the 
affirmative role of cultural diversity (different ethnic, cultural, 
religious and linguistic backgrounds and heritage) within European 
societies, and also of the need to question the boundedness of 
identities and cultures. These critical processes lead us to address the 
possibilities of a transcultural dialogue - one that opens up the ideas 
of belonging and sets up new positions for speaking that do not 
intersect with ethnic and national identities.

Media, performing arts and culture can foster innovative practical 
actions, and also alternative imaginaries on social phenomenon and 
spaces of collective participation. Indeed, different “liberal” and 
“applied” arts (film, theatre & performance, photography, crafts, 
architecture, design, etc.) as well as emerging cross-media forms 
(interactive and social media, games, street art, circus and 
performative practices, etc.), have a pivotal role to play in this 
direction.

Despite this high potential for opening up new perspectives the policies 
in the EU are caught in old traps: national cultural policies affect 
cultural productions by institutionalizing the process of othering 
through rhetorical discourses and hegemonic representations; the 
projects and practices in this field are often vital but fragmented and 
contained within specific areas and territories; the skills and 
professional figures associated with these processes are poorly defined 
and have no particular training centres; and finally, the evaluation 
methods of the initiatives are variable and lack consistent protocols. 
The combination of all these factors produces a fundamental weakness in 
a sector that in any case, remains extremely lively and promising.

On this basis, this special issue of Comunicazioni Sociali intends to 
invite international scholars, artists and practitioners to discuss 
through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives 1) the role 
of media, arts and culture in the management of policies and practices 
devoted to migration phenomena; 2) the ways and the degrees in which 
media, arts and culture have been considered as critical tools for 
transcultural dialogue; 3) the ways in which media, arts and culture 
have been used in processes of artistic creation within the framework of 
the “aesthetic cosmopolitanism”; 4) ways through which models of action 
in territories oriented toward bringing host populations into contact 
with migrants and refugees can be developed; 5) the specific set of 
tools and methodology that have been developed to assess social, 
cultural and economic impact of multi-, inter- and transcultural 
dialogue activities through arts, media and culture.



We invite abstracts on any of the following topics, but not exclusively*:

    Practices of empowerment of multi-, inter- and transcultural 
dialogue through media, arts and performative activities.
    Practices of media and performing arts as challenging spaces of 
dialogue, resistance and activism.
    The role of immigrant/diaspora/minority media.
    Participatory media and arts projects devoted to working directly 
with refugee and migrant groups in socially engaged practice.
    Audience development strategies aiming at promoting cultural diversity.
    Employment opportunities for migrants in cultural and creative 
industries.
    Comparisons between the approaches of public and private media.
    Practices and experiences in assessing projects in the field of 
multi- inter- and transcultural dialogue



* Please note this is not an exhaustive list of topics, and we will 
review any abstracts related to the media and 
migration/immigration/transculturalism and associated topics. Especially 
welcome are submissions rooted in media studies, visual, performance and 
cultural studies, critical data studies, postcolonial studies and from 
scholars who build bridges between academia, arts, policy, media system, 
public debate, and stakeholders’ networks.



Submission details

Proposals in English (between 300 and 400 words of length, excluding 
bibliography) are required to illustrate the objectives of the paper, 
the research question and the methodology adopted. They have to be sent, 
with a short biographical note, to (redazione.cs /at/ unicatt.it); 
(pierluigi.musaro /at/ unibo.it); (laura.peja /at/ unicatt.it), by June 1st, 2021 —.

Authors will be notified of proposal acceptance by June 15th, 2021.

If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the 
full article, in English, by October 1st, 2021.

Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and 
is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000-words.

Contributions will be submitted to double blind peer reviews.

The issue number 1/22 of Comunicazioni Sociali will be open access, and 
will be published in April 2022.



“Comunicazioni Sociali” is indexed in Scopus and it is an A-class rated 
journal by ANVUR in: Cinema, photography and television (L-ART/06), 
Performing arts (L-ART/05), and Sociology of culture and communication 
(SPS/08)

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