Challenges in Multicultural Marriages and Families

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Genealogy invites submissions on the topic of “Challenges in Multicultural Marriages and Families”. Despite nuanced differences, the term “multicultural” is used interchangeably with the terms “bicultural”, “cross-cultural”, “mixed”, “foreign-related”, “international”, “intercultural”, “transnational”, and “cross-border”. In recent decades, the world has witnessed a growing number of multicultural marriages and families, along with migration from the “Global South” to the popular “Global North”, and relocation from the “Global North” to the rapidly developing economies in the “Global South” (Jeffreys and Wang 2013; Wang 2015). The diverse backgrounds of these individuals, their complex transnational mobilities, and the different migration rules in each country/region present unexpected challenges for these couples and their families.

This Special Issue focuses on the challenges and aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the unique challenges faced by multicultural couples and their families in different countries and societies. The authors may address challenges in different types of multicultural marriages and families, such as heterosexual and non-heterosexual marriages, de facto marriages, nuclear families, extended families, adoptive families, and single-parent families. This includes couples/families of different races/ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, those of the same race/ethnicity but different cultural backgrounds, and those of the same race but different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

Discussions may center on the causes of these challenges, influencing factors, coping strategies of couples and families, consequences, associated opportunities, and other aspects. These may include the commonly studied challenges and biases faced by interracial couples and immigrant spouses/families in host countries (Rosenblatt and Stewart 2004; Friedman 2010; Farrer and Greenspan 2014; Heikkila 2015; Koide et al. 2019; Roy and Rollins 2019; Robinson-Wood et al. 2021), the new challenges caused and amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economic recession, changing border control policies, and other types of under-researched challenges.

This Special Issue is intended to cover a broad spectrum. It invites contributions from a wide range of disciplines on this topic. Contributions may address one or more challenges in multicultural marriages and families, including, but not limited to, the following areas:

• Cultural expression and identification;
• Language and communication;
• Marital, friendship, and/or intergenerational relationships;
• Gender issues;
• Decision making;
• Power, class, and inequalities;
• Child rearing and parenting;
• Domestic division of labor;
• Unemployment and financial difficulties;
• Spatial distance in a relationship;
• Role of religions, beliefs, and convictions;
• Deception, bigamy, intimate violence, and/or extramarital affairs;
• Multicultural governance and legal requirements/restrictions;
• Lack of legal, social, and/or economic support;
• Mobility, migration, adaptation, settlement, and social integration/acculturation;
• Racism and social prejudice/discrimination;
• Residency and citizenship;
• Negative stereotyping in the media and public discourse;
• Physical, emotional, or psychological vulnerability of spouses and families;
• Being alone and/or widowed in multicultural families.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor (Pan.wang@unsw.edu.au) and to the Genealogy editorial office (genealogy@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor for the purposes of ensuring a proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

References

Farrer, J. and Greenspan, A. 2014 Raising cosmopolitans: localised educational strategies of international families in Shanghai, Global Networks, 15 (2): 141–160.

Friedman, L.S. 2010 Marital immigration and graduated citizenship: post-naturalization restrictions on mainland Chinese spouses in Taiwan, Pacific Affairs 83(1): 73–93.

Heikkila, E. 2015. Integration and Challenges in Multicultural Marriages: Finnish Experiences. In Heikkila E and Rauhut, D (eds) Marriage migration and multicultural relationships, Institute of migration, pp. 104–117.

Jeffreys, E. and Wang P. 2013. The Rise of Chinese-Foreign Marriage in Mainland China (1979–2010), China Information, 27 (3): 347–69.

Koide, T., Yoshida T., Ogawa, E., Kuramoto, M., Homma, J. and Naruse, M. 2019. Uncovering Inner Dilemmas Experienced by Parents of Multicultural Families in Japan, Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 50 (3): 261–284.

Robinson-Wood, T., Muse, C., Hewett R., Balogun-Mwangi, O., Elrahman, J., Nordling A., Abdulkerim, N., and Matsumoto, A. 2021 Regular white people things: the presence of white fragility in interracial families, Family relations: interdisciplinary journal of applied family science, 70 (4): 973–992.

Rosenblatt, P. and C. Stewart 2004 Challenges in Cross-cultural Marriage: When She is Chinese and He Euro-American, Sociological Focus 37(1): 43–58.

Roy R. and Rollins, A. (eds) 2019 Biracial families: Crossing boundaries, blending cultures, and challenging racial ideologies, Springer.

Wang, P. 2015 Love and Marriage in Globalizing China, Abingdon: Routledge

Dr. Pan Wang
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.