[Commlist] Call for Papers: 'Forms, Limits and Future Directions of Storytelling in Migration Research'

Call for Papers: Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture

Special Issue: 'Forms, Limits and Future Directions of Storytelling in 
Migration Research'

Issue editors: Lena Englund (University of Eastern Finland) and Kaiju 
Harinen (Migration Institute of Finland, University of Turku)

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/crossings-journal-of-migration-culture#call-for-papers 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/crossings-journal-of-migration-culture#call-for-papers>

Much of migration research in the social sciences and humanities has 
been centred on bringing to light the experiences and stories of 
individuals and groups who have been marginalized, misrepresented or 
sometimes outright ignored in official discourse and dominant 
narratives. Stories can both reinforce existing societal discourses as 
well as function as a counterforce. That makes stories and storytelling 
a tool with which to perform political work in terms of how migration is 
debated and portrayed. Studies in the humanities build on storytelling 
in relation to the material examined, people interviewed or otherwise 
engaged with, and in the published research itself. Storytelling is here 
understood in a broad sense of the term, used for personal 
self-understanding, meaning making and communication, but also in 
politicized contexts, for example relating to how migration and migrants 
are addressed and depicted in the media. Migration is understood broadly 
as the movement of people in both voluntary and involuntary contexts, 
and limits are not to be seen as boundaries that may not be traversed, 
but also as a chance to probe further, to test new theoretical 
frameworks and to bring together case studies in novel ways.

Cultural studies, among other fields of study, have often been geared 
towards giving voice to groups or individuals in the margins (Pickering 
2018). The act of ‘giving voice’ may be problematic (Stonebridge 2021), 
and it can also include practices of ‘deaf listening’ that is selective 
as to what stories it acknowledges (Jolly 2010). Various kinds of 
‘instrumentalization’ of someone’s story (Propst 2020: 4) requires 
further attention, relating to questions of who is doing the giving of 
voice, who is the receiver, what constitutes the hierarchical 
relationship between the two actors and the limits of their cooperation. 
Societal narratives for their part appeal to people’s feelings, 
contextualized historically and culturally (Chaban et al. 2023). Yet, 
stories do not always make much difference politically even if designed 
to do so (Polletta 2023; Kurz 2015). While storytelling can bring people 
together, it may also cause rifts and divides, even to the extent of 
becoming an act of violence against the original storyteller sharing 
their experience (Jackson 2008). The responsibility of researchers is 
thus considerable.

 From a methodology perspective, this special issue is particularly 
interested in the limits and future directions of storytelling in both 
participatory as well as more textual contexts. Textual analysis centres 
on making sense of self and the world, a culturally and temporally 
specific practice, emphasizing the need to study time and place in 
relation to storytelling about migration. Participatory research methods 
may include decolonial perspectives on storytelling, and this issue 
welcomes critical examination of such approaches. In decolonial studies, 
scholars are encouraged to critically analyse the power relations and 
colonial structures embedded in storytelling and to engage with more 
marginalized epistemic practices. In doing so, a decolonial perspective 
calls into question the very existence of objective research as such. 
Journalism, too, engages in storytelling and in depicting migration in 
multiple ways for different purposes, drawing on a variety of methods 
that are relevant for this special issue. The documentary narrative 
hopes to depict ‘reality’ (Diaz 2021), which inevitably also means that 
the journalist’s voice narrating the story influences how the other is 
represented. The term documentary as a noun is generally applied to film 
but it can also be seen as a practice or method.

This special issue offers the opportunity to think further about what 
defines, restrains and generates storytelling in migration research in 
the humanities. Papers are invited from scholars as widely as possible, 
encouraging inter- and multidisciplinary approaches to storytelling in 
migration research about the challenges and limits involved with for 
example textual approaches, participatory methods and activist research. 
Theoretical engagements with storytelling in various contexts are 
welcome, as are studies relating to methodological concerns. Case 
studies of cultural expressions (e.g. fiction or nonfiction, films, the 
media) relating to the theme of the special issue are also much 
appreciated. Possible topics have been listed below, but the issue is 
not limited to these only.

Suggested topics:

  *

    The ethics of storytelling

  *

    The politics of storytelling

  *

    Storytelling and cultural memory

  *

    Limits of representation

  *

    Forms of storytelling

  *

    Disciplinary boundaries in migration research

  *

    The researcher as storyteller

  *

    Autoethnographic limits/boundaries

  *

    The future of migration research

  *

    Researcher activism/advocacy and solidarity

  *

    Gendered stories

  *

    Diasporic identities

  *

    The limits of terminology (migrant, migration, refugee, mobility etc)

  *

    Victim/villain dichotomies

  *

    Migration in the media

  *

    Artificial Intelligence in storytelling about migration

  *

    Intersubjective processes in migration research

  *

    Storytelling and polycrisis

Notes for contributors:

Abstracts of 300–500 words with brief author bios should be sent by 30 
September 2026 to (lena.englund /at/ uef.fi) <mailto:(lena.englund /at/ uef.fi)> and 
(kaiju.harinen /at/ utu.fi) <mailto:(kaiju.harinen /at/ utu.fi)>.

Full articles should be 6000–8000 words long (including notes, 
references, author biography, keywords and abstract). Submissions are 
expected to be original work not under consideration by other publishing 
outlets and will be sent out for anonymous peer review.

See https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/98048/1/CJMC_NFC_Oct_25.pdf 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/98048/1/CJMC_NFC_Oct_25.pdf>.

Timeline:

Abstracts: 30 September 2026

Decisions: 15 October 2026

Full papers: 28 February 2027

Editorial comments: March 2027

Papers ready for review:April 2027

Publication: late 2027

References:

Chaban, Natalia, Zhabotynska, Svitlana and Knodt, Michèle (2023), ‘What 
makes strategic narrative efficient: Ukraine on Russian e-news 
platforms’, Cooperation and Conflict, 58:4, pp. 419-440, 
https://doi.org/10.1177/001083672311612 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/001083672311612>.

Diaz, Liliana Chavez (2021),Latin American Documentary Narratives: The 
Intersections of Storytelling and Journalism in Contemporary Literature, 
London: Bloomsbury.

Jackson, Michael (2008), Politics of Storytelling: Variations on a Theme 
by Hannah Arendt, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jolly, Rosemary (2010), Cultured Violence: Narrative, Social Suffering, 
and Engendering Human Rights in Contemporary South Africa, Liverpool: 
Liverpool University Press.

Kurz, Katja (2015), Narrating Contested Lives: The Aesthetics of Life 
Writing in Human Rights Campaigns, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.

Pickering, Michael (2008), ‘Experience and the social world’, in M. 
Pickering (ed.), Research Methods for Cultural Studies, Edinburgh: 
Edinburgh University Press, p. 17-31.

Polletta, Francesca (2023), ‘Personal storytelling in social movements’, 
in P. Dawson and M. Mäkelä (eds), The Routledge Companion to Narrative 
Theory, New York: Routledge, pp. 104-116.

Propst, Lisa (2020), Marina Warner and the Ethics of Telling Silenced 
Stories, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Stonebridge, Lyndsey (2021), Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age 
of Human Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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