Call for abstract submission: Rethinking and undoing integration (working title)
Integration is a contested concept which tends to place the burden of “integrating” on migrants and their children (Dahinden 2016; Korteweg 2017). Some scholars suggest getting rid of the entire concept of “integration” and reorient academic and political work and towards issues of social inclusion (Pötzsch 2020). Monitoring migrants’ “integration” is argued to be a neocolonial practice of knowledge production (Schinkel 2018). Challenging this practice, instead of focusing on migrant “integration” as a process that perceives a particular group as “other” and lays out the requirements for fitting in, “integration” should be about critically examining societal structures that exacerbate racism, inequality, and exclusion. Overall, this criticism is related to the call to de-migrantize migration scholarship (Anderson 2019; Dahinden 2016), in other words, to discuss inclusion through a lens of systems of oppression rather than with a focus on particular groups of “others”.
In this book, we examine “integration” as a concept, practice, and field of research. What do we talk about when we discuss integration? The questions we invite contributors to discuss include but are not limited to:
- Beyond slight changes in terminology (e.g. from “integration” to “two/three-way integration”), what else is needed in order to promote policies and practices based on the idea that integration is a common responsibility of all members of a society?
- How can arts and sciences challenge and change existing conceptualizations and practices?
- What is the role of ongoing policy processes both nationally and locally in shaping and questioning what “integration” is, should, or can be?
- How do NGOs challenge the policies and politics related to “integration” and its processes?
- What does it mean to see “integration” as a colonial practice and what are the historical and present colonial implications of integration policies?
- Can we replace the concept of “integration” with something else, and what would that be?
- What historical legacies and future scenarios are involved in “integration” practices in Finland?
We warmly invite academic, activist, and artistic contributions from Finnish as well as international contexts to discuss these and related issues in this edited volume that will be the anniversary publication of the Finnish Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration (ETMU), which celebrates its 20-year anniversary in 2023. The submissions for this volume are not limited to academic research but can take for instance artistic, journalistic, community-based, activist, and other forms. Academic and artistic articles will undergo peer-review. The volume will be published as an open access book within the research-series of the Migration Institute of Finland.
We recommend manuscript to follow one or a combination of the following formats:
1) a practice-based paper/visual essay.
2) a research-based chapter with a length of approximately 6,000 words.
3) a commentary on research or artistic work with a length of approximately 3,000 words.
4) art-based and/or artistic research and work
Please email Zeinab Karimi at zeinab.karimi@helsinki.fi to submit your abstract.
The lead editors of this volume are Aminkeng Alemanji, Johanna Ennser-Kananen, Zeinab Karimi, Ilkhom Khalimzoda, Ameera Masoud, Faith Mkwesha, Saara Pellander, Maria Petäjäniemi, and Sepideh Rahaa.
Important dates
18.3.2022: Extended deadline for abstract submissions (400-500 words)
October 2022: Submission of first draft
January 2023: Submissions of book/chapters for review
Schedule of the publication process:
- February 2022: Call for abstracts
- March 2022: Decision about abstracts and inviting chapters
- April/May 2022: First contributor’s meeting
- Fall 2022: Authors’ workshop: submissions of first drafts (short version) and collaborative feedback on first drafts
- January 2023: submission of chapters for review
- Reviews finished by March
- Revisions done by April/May (first round), all revisions done by September
- Revised and edited manuscript submitted by October 2023
- Fall 2023: book launch at ETMU Days