Special Issue for Foreign Language Studies
CALL FOR PAPERS
Mobility, Migration, and Identity
Abstract Submission Deadline: 31 July 2025
Human migration began to transition from an itinerant and nomadic lifestyle to agrarian settlement around 12,500–10,000 years ago (de Hass, Castles and Miller 2020). The 21st century is witnessing “the routinization of geographically distant movement” (Shin and Lee 2022, 1) mainly for political, economic, social, and climatic reasons. It is a time when “[m]ore than at any other time in history, people and things move longer distances, more frequently, and faster than ever before,” when “every major domain of human activity has become increasingly defined by motion” (Nail 2018, 1). Referring to all types of human, non-human, or more-than-human movements that take place locally and globally, the concept of mobility can be seen as a fundamental aspect of human history, shaping the world in which we live. In this sense, migration, as human mobility, affects not only individuals, but also the societies that produce and receive migrants. The implications of migration can manifest at domestic, regional, and international levels, as well as in the political-economic, cultural, and environmental spheres. As people move across borders, either voluntarily or involuntarily, their identities are often renewed or hybridized through interactions with the new environments they transit or relocate to. That is, migration disrupts traditional notions of identity, requiring individuals to navigate between their heritage and the culture of their new environment. Understanding the interplay between mobility, migration, and identity is essential for exploring newly emerging societies and lifestyles in an increasingly globalized, mobile world, as we aspire to a more equitable and just future.
This special issue of Foreign Language Studies, slated for release in June 2026, will be dedicated to exploring issues associated with mobility, migration, and identity. Submissions addressing the following topics are invited:
- Narrativization of Human Mobility or Migration
- (Post)Colonial Histories of Migration
- Emotions and/or Affects of Mobility
- Creative Responses and Approaches to Mobility or Migration
- Ethics and/or Politics of Migration
- Human Lives in the Age of High Mobility: Migration and Human Rights
- Routinization of Global Migration and Changes in Cultural Identities
- Environmental Mobilities: Non-human or More-than-Human Mobilities
- Migration and Mobility across Literatures and Languages
- Migration and Mobility of Language
- Cultural Imagination of Alternative or Future Mobilities
Contributors are welcome to address issues or topics not listed above. We seek full-length articles that offer a fresh perspective, grounded in theory, and potentially controversial, on a major issue or issues related to mobility, migration, and identity. Full-length articles, written in English, should range from 6,000 to 10,000 words. If manuscripts are to be written in Chinese or other languages, authors have to provide an English abstract for initial review. Full-length Chinese articles should span 12,000 to 20,000 words, adhering to the same academic rigor, and delving into theoretical frameworks. The special issue also accepts book reviews and research notes of around 2,000 to 3,000 words on a related topic.
※Timeline
- Abstracts due: 31 July 2025
- Notification of full submission invitation: 15 August 2025
- Papers due for peer review: 31 October 2025
- Review decision: 30 January 2026
- Final papers due: 15 April 2026
- Publication date: 15 June 2026
Foreign Language Studies, founded in 2004, is an open-access peer-reviewed journal of foreign literature, language, teaching, and cultural studies, and one of the most well-established academic journals in Taiwan. As a multi-lingual journal, it is dedicated to the interdisciplinary exploration of literature, language, teaching, and culture. It focuses on the emergence of global vision and dialogue by addressing theoretical and practical issues arising from the encounter of various literatures, languages, teachings, and cultures around the world. It is currently indexed in Taiwan Citation Index - Humanities and Social Sciences, NCL Taiwan Periodical Literature, Airiti Library, HyRead Journal, Taiwan Academic Citation Index, Taiwan Journals Search, and LawData.
We welcome inquiries and proposals for co-authored contributions. Please contact the co-editors: Jinhyoung Lee (gespenst@konkuk.ac.kr) and Ching-An Chang (chingan@nccu.edu.tw).
Jinhyoung Lee (PhD) is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Mobility Humanities, Konkuk University, South Korea. He is Associate Editor of Mobility Humanities and a member of T2M’s Executive Committee. In addition to his book, Theories of Novel of Colonial Korea in the Late 1930s (2013), he has (co)translated Haim Hazan’s Against Hybridity (2020), Peter Merriman and Lynne Pearce’s collection, Mobility and the Humanities (2019), Linda Hutcheon’s Theory of Adaptation (2017) into Korean as well as Bakhtin’s Prosaics by Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson (2006). His interests include modern Korean fiction and criticism, the themes of diaspora, hybridity, (post)coloniality, and mobility humanities studies.
Ching-An Chang (PhD) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Culture at National Chengchi University, Taiwan (R.O.C.). His research interests include the Middle East (with a focus on the Levant), business communities, migration, and refugees. His work has been published in International Migration, the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Social Inclusion, and Insight Turkey. He has also contributed book chapters to both the Routledge Handbook on Middle East Diaspora and Actors and Dynamics in the Syrian Conflict’s Middle Phase: Between Contentious Politics, Militarization, and Regime Resilience (Routledge/St. Andrews Syrian Studies Series).
References
de Haas, H., Castles, S. and Mark J. Miller. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in The Modern World. Guilford Press, 2020.
Shin, I. and Jinhyoung Lee. “Introduction: The Humanities in the Age of High Mobility.” Mobility Humanities, vol. 1, no. 1, Jan. 2022, pp. 1-5.
Nail, Thomas. Being and Motion. Oxford UP, 2019.