CALL FOR PAPERS: “Transnational Social Work – A Border-Crossing Agenda for Practice and Research”
Deadline for submission of proposals: August 20, 2016
Guest editors Claudia Olivier-Mensah, Wolfgang Schröer and Cornelia Schweppe invite you to submit proposal abstracts for the focus topic “Transnational Social Work – A Border-Crossing Agenda for Practice and Research” of the journal Transnational Social Review – A Social Work Journal (TSR).
Research Interest
Transnational entanglements of social work are far from being a new phenomenon. Historically, social work and other social support systems have been engaged in and shaped by cross border processes in many ways. However, only recently social work has begun to systematically reflect upon them. One of the reasons is that the nation state remains firmly embedded in social work concepts as a frame of reference and is often used as an unquestioned background tapestry. As a result, it can be difficult for social work to identify transnational processes that they are depicted only to a limited degree – if at all – in social work terminology, research strategies and practice intervention. Accordingly, the key challenge when analyzing transnational processes is to reflect on and recognise the ways in which the nation state is embedded in social work theory, practice and research concepts and to overcome the frequent equating of the "national" with the "societal". Altogether, cross border processes and transformations pose essential challenges for social work as they question fundamental concepts and assumptions.
We start from the assumption that transnational social work is not just an additional form of social work, but it is at the very core of the profession. One of the main fields in which social work has reflected more systematically upon border crossing processes is the field of migration. Research provides a great deal of evidence that it is not only specific groups (like migrants) who are engaged in border crossing processes; rather, a transnationalisation of life worlds can be observed that affects many of the target groups of social work. A corresponding transnational entanglement of social work organizations and programmes and their social political context can be observed.
Focus
The focus topic “Transnational Social Work – A Border-Crossing Agenda for Practice and Research” will take up these challenges from theoretical, methodological and practical perspectives. We especially invite papers that deal with topics in fields that are not deliberately designed to be of a transnational nature, but are increasingly confronted with cross-border processes (e.g. long-term elderly care, children and youth services, family services, counselling services). The aim is to highlight transnational social processes in social work that are not automatically connected to migration, but that can expand the research focus beyond it.
We invite both empirical and theoretical papers, as well as articles exploring methodological questions, and which focus on (but may not be limited to) one or more of the following questions:
- What relevance do transnational life worlds have for social work? How do they challenge social work? What approaches emerge to respond to them?
- What are the implications of cross border processes for social work organizations, programs and intervention practices?
- What are the theoretical and empirical challenges that transnational processes pose for social work? What new research concepts and approaches emerge?
Requirements for Submissions
Each proposal abstract should contain no more than 500 words and should address the following: background of the proposed article, content outline and main discussion points. For those proposals that are accepted, the deadline for submission of full articles is November 15, 2016. The deadlines for the TSR issue focused on “Transnational Social Work – A Border-Crossing Agenda for Practice and Research” are:
- August 20, 2016: Submission of proposal abstracts
- November 15, 2016: Submission of full articles
- November/December 2016: Peer review
- January 2017: Revision of articles, if necessary
- February 2017: Final submission of publishable articles
- June 2017: Publication
Articles should be up to 8,000 words in length. The authors are responsible for submitting proofread and anonymized manuscripts. The instructions for authors are available at:
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rtsr20&page=instructions#.U6gIxIRhCCg
For more information on the journal TSR, please visit the homepage: www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtsr20
Contact
Inquiries and proposals should be sent to the guest editors via email:
Dr. Claudia Olivier-Mensah
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Research Training Group 1474 “Transnational Social Support”
55099 Mainz, Germany
Phone: +49 (0)6131-3930341
E-mail:
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schröer
Foundation University of Hildesheim
Institute for Social Work and Organization Studies
31141 Hildesheim, Germany
Phone: +49 (0)5121-883552
E-mail:
Prof. Dr. Cornelia Schweppe
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Institute of Education
55099 Mainz, Germany
Phone: +49 (0)6131-3920727
E-mail: