Home and Second Home: A Case of Eastern-European Diaspora

Dear Colleagues,

The world is becoming increasingly globalized, characterized, in Bourdieu’s words, by the shrinking of space and time. There are few places in the world where transnationalism is more visible than in Eastern European diaspora within the EU. The notion of ‘liquid migration’ has been used by Engbersen and Snel (2013) with regard to East–West migration to emphasize the diverse and fluid character of migration in the region these days. It has given rise to very complex identities and attachments to the country of origin and country of destination. Recognizing the need to change the approach to understanding migrant incorporaton in these new conditions, recent research focusing on place attachment has introced new concepts such as home-ing (or home-making), differentiated embedding (or dis-embedding), and social anchoring. Yet, there are still insufficient data about how Eastern European diasporas form attachments and anchor themselves in new places while maintaining connections to their country of origin.

The sending-country perspective has been under-represented in previous studies, and the impact of migration on the receiving countries has been assigned more importance than that on the migrants themselves. For a long time, migration and integration research has focused primarily on the objective statistical indicators, such as the structural integration of migrants into the labour market, their health outcomes, education, etc. However, less is known about how migration affects migrants’ happiness and subjective well-being. Whether migration brings happiness to migrants is a crucial question, especially in the context of growing interest in the use of well-being measures to evaluate societal progress. Longitudinal data in particular is missing, as well as comparative studies that could shed light on how common the processes discovered in some of the migrant groups are.

Most migration research has focused on adults, overlooking the fact that a substantive part of the migrating population are children. The challenges they face and their subjective experiences might be very different from those of their parents, yet they still remain relatively ‘voiceless’ in the migration debate.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to contribute to the expanding social science literature that seeks to enhance our understanding of contemporary migration, integration, and re-integration processes in general by studying them in the light of new forms of mobility characteristic to Eastern European migrants. It will complement the existing literature by offering a comparative sending-country perspective perspective with a focus on migrants own subjective feelings, perceptions, and identities.

Potential topics of the papers include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Formation of attachments and home-making practives among Eastern European migrants;
• Transnationalism and/ or liquid migration and its consequences for migrants;
• The subjective well-being of migrants;
• Diasporic identities and factors affecting their formation;
• Migrant children: their well-being, education, and social inclusion;
• Subjective interpretations of ‘integration’;
• Social and professional ties and networks across border;
• Families at home and abroad;
• Civic and community engagement at home and abroad.

Contributions have to follow one of the three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper, or review) of the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Inta Mieriņa
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 conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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.

• Central and Eastern Europe
• migration
• well-being and life satisfaction
• identity and belonging
• transnationalism
• liquid migration
• diaspora
• migrant children
• anchoring
• homeing
• embeddedness