Acculturation Processes and Intercultural Relations: Locals and Immigrants in Analogical and Digital Societies

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of Societies, we are organizing a Special Issue about the acculturation processes and intercultural relations in analogical and digital societies. We look forward to contributions focused on relations between locals and international and/or domestic immigrants worldwide.

In an increasingly multicultural and globalized world, literature is highlighting the pervasiveness of acculturation processes (e.g., Berry and Sam, 2010), and studies have been conducted on factors that affect both immigrant-based and globalization-based acculturation processes. Acculturation orientations of immigrants, locals’ expectations of how immigrants should acculturate, and locals’ proximal acculturation, i.e., the preference of the locals for adopting immigrants’ culture and/or maintaining their national culture, are all strictly related to intercultural relations’ quality and reinforcing or reducing prejudice, discrimination, and hate speech toward immigrants. It is known that contact with cultural otherness is not only inevitable in a globalized society, but it is also the main means through which intercultural relations can be improved. Based on Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis, a large number of empirical studies and meta-analyses confirmed the positive effect of contact in promoting intercultural dialogue, and online contact studies have shown that digital contacts can promote harmony between different cultural groups, as can analogical contacts (Imperato et al., 2021).

Based on these premises, this Special Issue invites the submission of high-quality empirical papers, reviews, and meta-analyses to advance the understanding of the psychological and social factors and mechanisms that underlie the construction of harmonious (versus conflictual) analogical and/or digital multicultural societies.

We would appreciate the use of a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. We encourage interdisciplinary and intersectoral perspectives. We particularly welcome high-quality case studies and experimental studies of acculturation and intercultural relations in digital contexts. Suggested themes might relate to, but are certainly not limited to, locals’ globalization-based acculturation processes, locals’ prejudice and discrimination toward immigrants, sustainability of intercultural relations in analogical and digital contexts, intercultural relations during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, and contact-based programs to reduce discrimination, prejudice, and hate speech toward immigrants.

Contributions must follow one of the three categories (article/review/conceptual paper) of papers of the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Mancini Tiziana
Ms. Chiara Imperato
Guest Editors

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.

• acculturation
• inter-cultural relations
• ethnic prejudice
• racism
• ethnic discrimination
• hate speech
• intergroup contact
• e-contact
• immigrants
• locals