Call for Papers

Special Issue on Immigration and Documentation: Exploring the Impact of Information and Institutions on Communities, Families and Individuals

Call for Submissions

InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies

Issues of immigration and documentation permeate institutional policies, implicate academic spaces, structure access to and use of information, and sculpt the contours of individual, familial and communal experiences. InterActions acknowledges both the historically oppressive policies affecting immigrant communities and the current treatment of immigrants under the extant state of affairs; particularly, we call attention to the impacts of the recent global economic crisis on the flow of immigration and enactment of new policies. The topic of immigration and documentation is a complex and layered phenomena that necessitates scholarly discourse on the relationship between people, documentation, and bureaucratic institutions to advance liberatory and just research, policy, and practice.

On May 9, 2014 InterActions presented the Immigration and Documentation Symposium to facilitate dialogue, support diverse communities, and affirm immigrant identities. Participants presented on a wide range of subjects, including but not limited to: 1) government and institutional systems, including policy; 2) community and familial narratives and experiences; 3) the impact of individual agents; and 4) documentation, including the use and management of information. InterActions will continue to bring together researchers, scholars, and organizations from diverse disciplines, to provide an additional space for academic engagement. More specifically, the Immigration and Documentation special issue will feature research that examines current and future directions of immigration and documentation in the United States and throughout the world, including perspectives from impacted community members.

Thematic Priorities: InterActions hopes to enhance the visibility of immigration and documentation issues, drawing upon the expertise of scholars and impacted community members. We strive to illuminate the current topics pertaining to immigration and documentation in the United States and throughout the world. Possible research topics include:

Government and Institutional Policies and Systems

• Visa types and subsequent policies within academia
• Implications for documented-mixed families
• Institutional barriers, varying by institutional type and geographical location
• Disparate state policies, applications, and interpretations
• Diverse definitions of AB 540 status within academic institutions
• Histories of guest worker programs, including the H-2 and Bracero Programs
• Ethnic policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and Executive Order 9066

Community, Familial Narratives, and the Impact of Individual Agents

• Diverse perspectives of undocumented childhood arrivals and recent immigrants
• Administrative/governmental assumptions about the migrant identity
• Immigrant organizations and their contributions/challenges
• The role of leadership within the immigrant rights movement
• Intersectionalities of identity and immigration status
• Oral histories and testimonios

Documentation and Information Use and Management

• The ways in which libraries (both formal and informal) serve and respond to immigrant and undocumented communities through a range of services, programs and concerns
• Public libraries as conduits for government information and services
• Interventions into “Big Data,” analytics and immigration policy
• The relationship between record keeping and human rights, reclamation or reparations
• Cultural memory and heritage institutions and their roles and responsibility to immigrant and migrant populations
• The role that documentation, including film, photography, and music play in building communities

InterActions seeks to include a range of submissions, including (but not limited to) research articles, literature reviews, book reviews, exhibition reviews, featured commentaries, position pieces, literary or artistic pieces. Submissions should incorporate critical perspectives that aim to bridge multiple discourses around the theme of the issue. All submissions will be subject to double-blind peer-review and authors are expected to adhere to the deadlines to ensure the timely publication of the special issue.

Timeline:

• Deadline for article, literature review, literary and artistic pieces (please send all images in TIFF format) Submissions: October 31, 2014
• Deadline for book review submissions: November 20, 2014
• Tentative deadline for peer reviews of submitted manuscripts: November 20, 2014
• Submission deadline for manuscript revisions: December 6, 2014
• Publication for the Special Issue on Immigration and Documentation: late January 2015
• Please submit manuscripts and book reviews to InterActions’ eScholarship portal: http://escholarship.org/uc/gseis_interactions

Any questions or inquiries about the special issue may be directed to:

• Guest editors: Patricia Garcia (patricia.garcia@ucla.edu) and Marco Murillo (marcom2@ucla.edu)
• InterActions Editorial Board: interactions@gseis.ucla.edu

The journal is soliciting book reviews of the following titles for its special section. Please contact us if you are interested in reviewing one of these publications or another title for our upcoming issue:

• Abrego, L. (2014). Sacrificing families: Navigating laws, labor, and love across borders. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Chomsky, A. (2014). How immigration became illegal. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Guterman, G. (2014). Performance, identity, and immigration law: A theatre of undocumentedness. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Mallapragada, M. (2014). Virtual homelands: Indian immigrants and online cultures in the united states. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Menjivar, C. & Kanstroom, D. (Eds.). (2013). Constructing immigrant ‘illegality’: Critiques, experiences, and responses. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Molina, N. (2013). How race is made in america: Immigration, citizenship, and the historical power of racial scripts. Oakland, CA: University of California Press
• Motomura, H. (2014). Immigration outside the law. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

A full description of the Immigration and Documentation symposium can be accessed at: http://iasymposium.blogspot.com/. For additional information, questions, or concerns please e-mail interactions@gseis.ucla.edu.

Timeline:
Extended Submission Deadline April 10, 2014
Symposium Date May 9, 2014

For additional information, questions, or concerns please e-mail interactions@gseis.ucla.edu