Education, Migration, Religion: An Ethnographic Perspective

Dear Colleagues,

Migration transforms not only where people live but also how knowledge, religious traditions, identities and collective memories are transmitted across generations. Education and religion are central to these processes. In schools, families, religious communities, migrant organisations, refugee settings and digital spaces, migrants and their descendants negotiate questions of belonging, continuity, difference and social participation.

This Special Issue examines the intersections of education, migration and religion from an ethnographic perspective. It invites contributions that explore lived experiences and institutional practices through participant observation, ethnographic interviews, life histories, multi-sited fieldwork, digital ethnography and related ethnographically informed approaches. Of particular interest are studies showing how educational practices and religious worlds shape migration trajectories, how migration transforms religious learning and socialisation and how individuals and communities reproduce, reinterpret, or contest inherited traditions.

Bringing ethnographic research into dialogue with genealogical questions enables particular attention to temporal, relational and intergenerational processes. The Special Issue therefore asks how religious affiliations, educational aspirations, family histories, language practices and collective memories are transmitted and transformed across generations and transnational spaces. It also considers how schools, religious institutions, families and community organisations facilitate belonging while simultaneously producing or reinforcing boundaries, inequalities and forms of exclusion.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Religious education, religious socialisation and informal learning in migration contexts;
• Migration biographies and the intergenerational transmission of religion, identity and memory;
• Schools, families, congregations and migrant organisations as sites of education and belonging;
• Refugee education and religious practice;
• Religious conversion, pluralisation, hybridity and secularisation in migrant contexts;
• Multilingualism and transnational educational or religious networks;
• The intersections of migration, religion, race, gender, class and generation;
• Educational and religious responses to displacement and forced migration;
• Digital, multi-sited, participatory and decolonial ethnographies;
• Reflexivity, positionality and ethical challenges in ethnographic research;
• Institutional and policy responses to religious and educational diversity.

We welcome contributions from anthropology, sociology, education, religious studies, theology, migration studies, social work, history, human geography and related disciplines. Empirical articles should be ethnographically grounded. Methodological and conceptual contributions are also welcome where they engage directly with ethnographic knowledge and the intergenerational, historical, or genealogical dimensions of education, migration and religion.

Dr. Stefan Van Der Hoek
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• education
• migration
• religion
• ethnography
• religious socialisation
• intergenerational transmission
• transnationalism
• belonging
• identity
• lived religion