Submit a Manuscript to the Journal
Language and Intercultural Communication

For a Special Issue on
Vulnerability and multilingualism in intercultural research with migrants: Developing an inclusive research practice

Call for Contributions 

Special Issue of Language and Intercultural Communication

Guest editors: 

Sara Ganassin, Newcastle University

Alexandra Georgiou, University of West London

Judith Reynolds, University of Manchester

Mohammed Ateek, University of Leicester

This proposed Special Issue (SI) explores the interplay of vulnerability and multilingualism in research with migrant individuals and communities, including both forced and voluntary migrants. The focus is on methodological complexities and on the development of ‘best practice’ in carrying out research with these groups. Increased mobility, migration and the recent events in Europe and the Middle East have resulted in many countries becoming more linguistically and culturally diverse. Such diversity is necessarily characterised by power asymmetries of various kinds, including socioeconomic, epistemic, and also linguistic inequalities leading to social injustices experienced by migrant communities. This situation requires researchers to be able to meet the linguistic, cultural and social demands defined by the new reality, including openly and critically discussing the concepts of inclusive
research, and negotiating vulnerability in research, in depth (van Liempt & Bilger, 2012; Blommaert & Backus, 2013; Pinter, 2014; Georgiou, 2022). Therefore, the theme of negotiating vulnerability in research is of particular importance for researchers in intercultural communication
and other fields in the social sciences who work with multilingual migrants.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM, 2011) identifies migration as an umbrella term, referring to ‘the movement of a person or a group of persons, either across an international border or within a State. It is a population movement, encompassing any kind of movement of people, whatever its length, composition and causes; it includes migration of refugees, displaced persons, economic migrants, and persons moving for other purposes, including family reunification’. We invite contributions from researchers who work with these groups, in different parts of the world, that reflect critically upon questions of vulnerability and multilingualism in their research practice.
In this area of research, methodological issues connected to vulnerability and individuals’ linguistic repertoires are implicit but are generally under-explored. Prior research such as that featured in Phipps and Ladegaard (2020) has explored issues of vulnerability and multilingualism in language and intercultural communication, but lacks critical exploration of how they feature as part of research practices and processes. Other work highlighting the politics of researching multilingually (e.g. Holmes et al.. 2022) advances methodological debates about research practice with multilingual communities, but does not focus on how vulnerability manifests and is addressed (or not) in research processes (c.f. Georgiou, 2022).

Current debates on ‘vulnerability’ and best practice in research are central to the SI. These include discussion of the impact of institutional and social frameworks in the social and political sciences (van Liempt and Bilger, 2012); the labelling of people as ‘vulnerable’ and the role of resistance in
addressing vulnerability (Butler, 2016); and reflective approaches to different types of vulnerability (Badwan, 2021), e.g. “personal” and “collective” vulnerability, when engaging with participants who are considered to belong to vulnerable groups.
This SI represents an effort to document how researchers in different domains of intercultural communication have dealt with the methodological complexities of addressing vulnerability and multilingualism in their studies from planning to dissemination. We invite contributors to provide
research-informed guidance on how vulnerability can be understood, negotiated and dealt with in intercultural communication research with multilingual migrant populations.

Aims and Contributions
The aims of special issue are:
● to share up-to-date empirical research on themes related to the interplay of ‘vulnerability’, ‘social justice’, ‘power’ and ‘ethics’ in conducting research with migrant multilinguals;
● to offer research-informed guidance on how to exhibit researcher sensitivity and gain an in-depth understanding of the power differences between researchers and participants;
● to foreground, and promote theorisation of, the concept of vulnerability in intercultural communication research and to encourage critical reflection on the impact of vulnerability in research contexts; and
● to provide a forum for intercultural communication researchers to critically examine the theoretical and methodological challenges and opportunities they face when working with vulnerable multilinguals.
We invite contributors to the SI to provide transparent and theory-informed accounts of how they dealt with methodological decisions (e.g. gaining access and consent, ensuring confidentiality, managing relationships with participants and other stakeholders, working with child-participants)
during the life of their projects from planning to dissemination. Proposed contributions should engage with issues such as:

● vulnerability in intercultural communication research and how this is negotiated/addressed throughout the research process;
● power asymmetries in conducting intercultural communication research with migrant individuals and communities;
● processes and practices in such research with a focus on ‘best practice’; and
● the voice and identity of the researcher and how they can move beyond essentialist views when conducting multilingual research with vulnerable participants.

Please send abstracts of up to 500 words (plus references) to the editors, via Sara Ganassin at [email protected], by 5 December 2022.

Final contributions should be no more than 8000 words in total (including references and appendices).

Timeline 

Submission acceptance notification: 31 January 2023

Deadline for first full draft:                  31 July 2023

Deadline for final draft:                        1 March 2024

Date of publication:                              October 2024

Please feel free to circulate this call around your networks. Potential contributors are warmly invited to contact the Editors to discuss their potential ideas before submission.

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