Call for Papers

Deadline: 20th May 2016

The topic of migration has dominated public debate in recent years.  

Patterns of migration may pose challenges to national self-perception, indeed, to concepts of nationalism itself. Debates surrounding the current so-called 'crisis’ of refugees in Europe also tend to overlook the trajectories of migrants from their countries of origin to a wide variety of destinations. A global history perspective allows us to critically re-examine these claims, and provides an alternative framework for contextualising migration flows as well as analysing the causes and impact of such phenomena from a historical, trans-regional perspective.

National bureaucratic structures and modern nation-states can widely affect migration patterns and strategies, just as migration can affect nation-states and their bureaucratic structures. However, the process itself can function independently of national constraints. How can historians address these issues without replicating eurocentric perspectives and teleological narratives?

Examples of migration from a global history perspective

Michael Goebel’s recent book ‘Anti-Imperial Metropolis’ exemplifies the usefulness of employing a global history approach. By examining anti-colonial figures in inter-war Paris, Goebel shows the centrality of migration for the formation of ideas and movements.     

Professor Adam M. McKeown provides another pertinent example with his research on national bureaucratic policies. By utilising global comparisons he argues that the United States and its Asian exclusion laws in the 19th century were particularly important in articulating and crafting policies and practices of migration control within the international system. He intends to trace how national processes became international—to write the history of international identity documentation and migration control as global history.

Themes of particular relevance include, but are not limited to:

• push and pull factors

• impact on countries as destinations and departures

• comparison and connection

• transmission, diffusion, and adaptation of ideas and concepts

• types of cultural exchange

• impact of diasporic communities

• integration and disintegration

• gendered patterns in migration

• bureaucracies as sites of identity enforcement

• colonial and imperial order and disorder

Who we are

Global Histories is a student-run open access journal based in the MA Global History programme at Humboldt University and Free University in Berlin.  We are looking for submissions from fellow students across the world for our June issue on the topic of migration from a global perspective.

Submissions

Article submissions should be between 4500-7000 words and written in English with vernacular scripts in the original and transcription included wherever appropriate.

Authors should register on our website www.globalhistories.com to submit their work via our online system.

Please consult our submission guidelines at http://www.globalhistories.com/index.php/GHSJ/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

Abstracts and proposals can be submitted via email to submissions@globalhistories.com, but applicants should do so well in advance of the 20th May final deadline.

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