Journal: Sustaintability.

Read about the special issue call for paper here

Feelings of displacement and poor quality of life—including physically, socially, psychologically—are particularly heightened for migrant communities, especially at a time when the world is grappling with a global pandemic. With about one billion people on the move globally—many of whom are impacted by the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic—and increased mental health diagnoses within many migrant communities since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to build research capacity in addressing the health needs of socially disadvantaged migrant populations globally. Nonetheless, there are reasons to believe that these health and quality of life concerns may have worsened for migrants due to their loss of resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the changes that followed this loss. While many citizens were anchored at their home countries, having some support from their governments and families, voluntary and non-voluntary migrants—including international students, skilled and unskilled migrant workers, refugees—were left, in most host countries, to grapple with the drastic changes and losses that came with the COVID-19 pandemic. These sudden pandemic-related changes led to considerable loss of resources within migrant communities, including but not limited to their loss of economic (e.g., financial stability, job loss), interpersonal (e.g., relationship losses, heightened social isolation), physical (e.g., displacement, nutritional deficiencies, travel and home-bond restrictions), and psychological (e.g., control over one’s life, sense of purpose, anxiety about the future in host countries) resources. The loss of physical, economic, interpersonal, and psychological resources due to the COVID-19 pandemic make migrant populations susceptible to increased stress levels and decline in health and quality of life. To fully understand the impact of the global COVID-19 health crisis on migrant populations around the world, this Special Issue will consider the multifaceted and broader contexts through which to measure and conceptualise migrant health and flourishing. Additionally, given the continuing scarcity of health research in socially disadvantaged migrant contexts, this Special Issue will provide a solid and enduring foundation to the establishment of a new critical mass in the field of migrant health and flourishing, with a commitment to influence policy and practice. A direct consequence of this issue will be 1) knowledge creation and dissemination (innovative, high-quality evidence-based research on the social, economic, and cultural factors that influence migrant health and flourishing); 2) knowledge translation (translating research into practice, program, and policies in relation to migrant health and flourishing); 3) collaboration (growing international collaborations for improving migrant health and flourishing); and iv) capacity building in health and socially disadvantaged migrant communities around the world. Cross-disciplinary empirical and theoretical contributions and policy papers, from across the health, social, and behavioural sciences, addressing any of these objectives through various theories and methodologies are welcomed.

Contributors should initially submit an abstract of up to 300 words and a brief biography by 20 June 2021 to the editor. Full papers will be due by 15 November 2021. Articles should not exceed 7000 words (including references).

Dr. Victor Counted
Guest Editor

Journal: Journal for the Academic Study of Religion

View Call for Papers here

The Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, the publication of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion, is inviting expressions of interest for a planned special issue on the theme of “Religion, Spirituality and the New African Diaspora” to be published in 2021.

In contrast to the African diaspora created through the slave trade, the “new” African diaspora is the product of recent and voluntary human movement (Okpewho & Nzegwu 2009), as individuals, families and communities have sought asylum, education, employment and other opportunities outside Africa. Recognizing that continuities and changes in religious and spiritual practices are a foundational aspect of diasporic experience, and that religion can be the “motor” of migration and migrant identity formation (Adogame 2007), this special issue is open to research articles on all aspects of religion, spirituality and the new African diaspora. We are particularly interested in studies from the Asia-Pacific region, but welcome articles focusing on any part of the world.

Although the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion does not publish purely confessional articles, we welcome cross-disciplinary contributions from across the humanities and social sciences addressing the topic through various theories and methodologies. Representative (but not exhaustive) of the themes scholars may wish to address, we would welcome contributions engaging with: theories of the Black Atlantic, or more recent conceptualizations of the “Black Mediterranean” and “Black Pacific”; religion, spirituality and new expressions of racism and xenophobia; religion, identity, and the securitization of migration; indigenous African religions in the new diaspora; religion and spirituality as resources for individual and collective resilience and resistance; transnational religious networks; Pentecostalism and the new African diaspora; religion and the production of the local; religious music and popular culture in the new African diaspora; postcolonial and decolonial approaches to religion and spirituality in the new African diaspora.

Contributors should initially submit an abstract of up to 300 words and a brief biography by 31 July 2020 to both editors. Full papers will be due by 31 December 2020. Articles should not exceed 8000 words (including references).

Dr Ibrahim Abraham (Australian National University, co-editor JASR) ibrahim.abraham@anu.edu.au

Dr Victor Counted (Western Sydney University, guest editor JASR) v.counted@westernsydney.edu.au

References:

Adogame, A. 2007. “Raising Champions, Taking Territories: African Churches and the Mapping of New Religious Landscapes in Diaspora,” in T. L. Trout (ed.), The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Okpewho, I. & N. Nzegwu (eds). 2009. The New African Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Book Series: Religion, Spirituality, and Health: A Social Scientific Approach.

The book will explore some of the historical and contemporary aspects of spiritual experiences and health outcomes in which place matters: centring on the well-being implications of people-place relationship experiences in religion, health risk factors associated with place-based religion, and the health benefits of sacred and religious places in different cross-cultural contexts.

There is no available Call for Papers for this book series. However, if you feel that you have a chapter that might fit the rubric of the book do feel free to send me an email at connect@victorcounted.org