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Contributing Articles

ISSN: 2053-4272

Issue 38 Call for Contributors

Development Education and Migration

 

  • Deadline for article abstracts is Friday, 10 November 2023
  • Deadline for article submissions is Friday, 8 December 2023
  • Publication date is Spring 2024

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Policy and Practice is a peer reviewed, bi-annual, open access journal published by the Centre for Global Education, a non-governmental development organisation based in Belfast.  First published in 2005, Policy and Practice aims to provide a space for development education (DE) practitioners to critically reflect on their practice, discuss the main challenges faced by the sector and debate new policy developments.  Development education uses an active learning, participative approach to education that addresses the root causes of poverty and injustice and seeks to enable learners to take action toward positive social change.  It draws upon Paulo Freire's concept of praxis that combines reflection and action to support a meaningful intervention in reality.   Policy and Practice aims to: share new research in development education; celebrate and promote good practice in DE; enhance collaboration between development education and related adjectival education sectors; further mainstream development education within the statutory education sector in Ireland; and provide opportunities for exchange and debate between educators from the global North and South.

Policy and Practice has a designated website (www.developmenteducationreview.com) which contains an archive of all previous 36 issues which are available for viewing online and for downloading.  The journal is listed on Scopus (H-Index 2) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  In 2021, the Policy and Practice web site received 220,000 unique visits from countries in the global North and South.  Policy and Practice articles have generated 3,674 citations that have appeared in 505 journals, 270 books and 349 dissertations.

ABOUT THE THEME

Centre for Global Education is inviting contributions to Issue 38 of our bi-annual, peer reviewed, open access journal Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review on the theme: Development Education and Migration.   According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), there are 281 million international migrants globally who are defined as people who were born abroad or holding foreign citizenship.  The media narratives surrounding migrants and migration are often negative and aligning with far-right nationalist values and attitudes.  Governments, too, have often advanced anti-immigrant policies that have sought to pander to, or incite, far-right attitudes on migration such as the British government’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda.  Described by Amnesty International as ‘shockingly ill-conceived’, the Rwanda policy, argues the UN, ‘is at odds with the country’s obligations under international law’.  The European Union has also sought to pull-up the drawbridge to migrants by signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Tunisia that will provide financial and technical support to ‘deter Europe bound migration’.  This agreement, argues Amnesty, makes the EU ‘complicit’ in abuses against refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers.

Issue 38 of the journal will ask why is migration so often couched in negative terms?  Why do the dominant media narratives of migration either miss or ignore the positive contribution that migrant workers regularly make to economies across the world?  In 2022, international migrants sent $647 billion to low- and middle-income countries in remittances which was an eight per cent increase on the previous year.  This total is higher than foreign direct investment and official development assistance to these countries combined.  Moreover, migrants boost the economies of their host countries with the OECD finding that ‘Migrants contribute to the internationalisation of their host economy by promoting trade flows of their host economy and boost total imports and exports of their host region’.  Additional to these economic benefits is the diversity brought by migration through new languages, lifestyles, religions and cultures.

The positive aspects of migration, however, are being crowded out by the ‘Othering’ and stereotyping often employed by media and governments to blame migrants for many of our social ills.  As neoliberal economies have stalled and collapsed in the wake of COVID-19 and the 2008 global economic crisis, migrants have regularly been targeted for advantage by the political right. This in turn has fueled anti-immigrant policies designed to make it increasingly treacherous for migrants to find sanctuary in high-income countries.  The IOM found that between 2014 and 2022, at least 54,125 people lost their lives while migrating internationally with another 2,609 deaths and disappearances recorded globally by 22 June 2023.  We are rapidly becoming normalized to the mass drownings in the Mediterranean such as the maritime disaster in June 2023 off the coast of Greece when a fishing vessel carrying 750 migrants from the global South capsized.  This story was quickly eclipsed by another maritime disaster when five men, including two billionaires, died while on the ‘adventure of a lifetime’ to view the wreckage of the Titanic having paid $250,000 for the privilege.

This issue of Policy and Practice affords an opportunity to examine migration from a range of perspectives including: the push factors that force people to migrate; the state migration policies that await migrants in the global North; the lack of safe international migratory routes; the role of the international media in shaping public discourse on migration; the often ignored positive outcomes of migration and societal contributions of migrants in host countries; and the role of development education in challenging, as well as reinforcing, myths and stereotypes that surround migration.

Among the questions that contributors to Issue 38 could consider are the following:

  • How does development education address migration and the multiple drivers that influence migration?  For example, climate change, conflict, human rights abuses and extreme poverty.  
  • What approaches to development education engage with the positive outcomes of migration?  For example, remittances in low and middle-income countries, cultural diversity, economic benefits for host countries and increased knowledge of the global South.
  • How does development education consider the negative outcomes of migration for low- and middle-income countries?  For example, the loss of skilled workers because of outward migration to the global North, particularly in healthcare.  A drain on the economy and education system.
  • How does development education and broader educational policies and practices correspond to wider governmental and multilateral policies on migration?  For example, the Direct Provision system in Ireland; the use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers and the Rwanda policy in the UK; European Union migration policy of reducing migration to EU countries through payments to non-EU states.
  • What innovative development education approaches engage with media representations of migration, seeking to challenge anti-immigrant sentiment and provide clarity and accuracy on the issue of migration? 
  • How can development education address migration in the wider context of threats to democracy, challenges to human rights and the rise of far-right politics? Recent examples include Brexit and the Trump administration.
  • What are the challenges and limits to development education’s capacity to address the topic of migration in different educational contexts?  Are learners demotivated or resistant to engagement with this and other important development topics?  Is there a loss of faith in campaigning, particularly by young people?
  • What are the opportunities and possibilities for development education to extend our knowledge and understanding of migration based on current or recent practice?  Where this engagement is happening, what tools, resources and learning frameworks have supported it?

Authors interested in submitting an article to Issue 38 should send a 300-word abstract to journal editor, Stephen McCloskey, by Friday, 10 November 2023.  Please email:stephen@centreforglobaleducation.com.  The submission date for commissioned articles is Friday, 8 December 2023.  

Article Types

There are four kinds of article published in Policy and Practice. 

  • Focus articles are peer reviewed, between 3,500 and 6,000 words, and should have a strong critical and theoretical analysis of their topic. 
  • Perspectives articles which are 2,000 – 4,000 words in length and more descriptive, addressing an aspect of development education practice. 
  • Viewpoint articles which are 2,000 – 4,000 words in length and opinion pieces on burning issues related to DE policy and practice. 
  • Review articles are 1,000-2,000 words in length and offer an opinion of a new book, film, teaching resource or online site on development issues. 

Policy and Practice is on Facebook

Please ‘like’ the journal on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/policyandpractice. We will post new articles and journal updates on the Facebook page. 

Policy and Practice is funded by Irish Aid.

This document has been published as part of a development education project funded by Irish Aid at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Irish Aid is the Government’s overseas development programme which supports partners working in some of the world’s poorest countries. Irish Aid also supports global citizenship and development education in Ireland to encourage learning and public engagement with global issues. The ideas, opinions and comments herein are entirely the responsibility of the Centre for Global Education and do not necessarily represent or reflect DFA policy

For further information contact:
Stephen McCloskey
Editor
Centre for Global Education
9 University Street
Belfast BT7 1FY
Tel: (0044) 2890 241879
E-mail: stephen@centreforglobaleducation.com
Web: www.centreforglobaleducation.com 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/centreforglobaleducation

www.developmenteducationreview.com

October 2023