[Commlist] CfP Migration Media Histories

Call for papers: Migration in Media Histories

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 /at/ 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 /at/ uva.nl)) 
and dr. Andrea Meuzelaar ((a.meuzelaar /at/ uva.nl))

TMG Journal for Media History is an open access journal. The publication 
requires no payment by the authors.


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------