Dear Colleagues,

This special issue invites scholars and practitioners for interdisciplinary discussions about the multilayered roles and efficacies of religion over the course and in the context of refugee-migrants’ life trajectories. Intellectually innovative essays on either the relatively recent refugee crisis or rather long-term phenomena among refugee-diaspora communities in any continents are all welcome. Selected papers should demonstrate interdisciplinary approaches and comparative perspectives primarily based on empirical research on the transformative interactions with the divine in refugee camps, among refugee-migrant individuals and social movements, religious institutions and networks, and (inter)national organizations. In particular, contributors are encouraged to shed light on the ways religious mobilizations and religious strategies of place-making help refugees recover and reconstruct their lives in exile during periods of loss. Papers should provide critical reflections on the ongoing tensions between the secular and the sacred, the national and the transnational, security and humanity, and etc. Further, this special issue wants to examine the moral, imaginative, and utopian forces in the flows of the displaced through the lens of religion that exhibits a transformative power for people interacting with each other in terms of hospitality, self-help and healing. As such, our contributions should encompass the secular and sacred obstacles and aspirations that the refugee individuals’ experience and envision through their life trajectories. We believe that this open-ended proposal will inspire promising and established scholars, field practitioners, and refugee actors to raise their voices for long-term mutual goals to negotiate in religious terms. Ultimately, this special issue aims to cumulatively effect a paradigm shift in the approaches, perspectives, and practices on the potentials and limits of divine and humane interactions in the studies of refugee and religion.

Guest Editors

Dr. Jin-Heon Jung (Freie Universitaet Berlin) & Dr. Alexander Horstmann (Tallinn University)

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 papers will be 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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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 single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 350 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.

Keywords

• refugee
• religion
• Interdisciplinary approaches
• transformative humane-divine interactions
• paradigm shift

 

Please visit http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/Refugee for more information.