Proposals for articles must be sent before 15 December 2025 to the following email address: revue.e.migrinter@gmail.com.
Selection of proposals for articles on 15 January 2026
Submission of articles before 15 April 2026
*
Proposals for articles, written in French, English or Spanish, should be approximately 300 words in length (excluding bibliography) or a maximum of 2,500 characters, excluding spaces and bibliography.
Please refer to the recommendations for authors for standards regarding the presentation of text, bibliography and illustrations: https://journals-openedition-org.ressources.univ-poitiers.fr/e-migrinter/332
If you have any questions regarding the call for papers, please write to the following email addresses: revue.e.migrinter@gmail.com; francesca.di.donato@univ-poitiers.fr; richelli.afonso@ehess.fr
*
Francesca Di Donato, University of Poitiers, Migrinter, IC Migrations
Richelli Afonso, School of Advanced Studies in the Social Science, Cercec/Migrinter
*
This call for papers aims to publish a special issue in the E-migrinter journal, which will be based on an interdisciplinary reflection on the issue of family transmission in a migratory and post-migratory context. This issue brings forward the discussions that took place at the international conference Migrations & Transmissions, held on the 40th anniversary of the Migrinter research center in June 2025.
This issue invites further reflection from the various researchers who contributed to the conference, but also from anyone interested on this subject.
“Transmission” here refers to all processes of transfer between different social groups — migrants/descendants of migrants/non-migrants — at different levels. In sociology, this notion interacts with concepts such as habitus, trajectory and heritage, highlighting the dynamics of social reproduction and intergenerational interactions (Prestini, 2006).
But how does using the family as a level of analysis enable us to redefine the concept of transmission in migration studies?
The aim of this special issue is to analyse the mechanisms of family transmission, paying particular attention to the ways in which research produces knowledge on this topic. We propose to address these themes through three main axes:
The study of the relationship between transmission and migration demands some consideration of the quantitative and qualitative tools. In the French-speaking world, demographic studies have led to the joint analysis of family, professional and migratory biographies (Courgeau, 1985), as well as the combined exploration of family and heritage dimensions through genealogical reconstructions (Bourdieu et al., 2004). By making it possible to grasp the procedural dimension of the migration experience (Collet and Veith, 2013), the biographical approach — like the collection of life stories — offers a privileged means of accessing the intimate narratives of the people interviewed. A multi-situated approach (Marcus, 1995) may also be necessary to understand how certain transmissions have or have not taken place from one space to another.
Research related to transmission within immigrant families also raises questions related to the unspeakable and unheard aspects of migration (Miranda, 2019), referring to ethical issues in research. By adopting a ‘reflexive methodology’ (Demazière, 2008), we can see how, in a family context, the researcher is caught up in a web of meanings that could frequently be unspoken/tacit. He/she is then faced with a particular ethical imperative, responding to a principle of discretion, and an objective imperative linked to the scientific work of ‘generalisation’ (Genard and Roca i Escoda, 2010). Although ethically challenging to access, are the intimate and private elements revealed by questions of transmission in or from migration essential aspects of scientific inquiry?
Considering the dialectic between the causes of emigration and the conditions of immigration, widely discussed since the 1980s, has opened a rich field for studying the transmission of knowledge and representations in and of migration. The rupture and continuity of ties with home can be the cause of migratory behaviours that extend into the new settlement area (Rosental, 1990), calling into question the representation of migration as a spatially unambiguous mechanism that follows pre-established norms. From this perspective, transmission is not only an observable process, but also a lens through which to study the accumulation of knowledge — individual, familial, or collective — which, combined with its circulation, transforms societies and territories over several time scales (Séhili and Zúñiga, 2014).
Within a family timeline, migratory knowledge can become a resource transmitted from generation to generation, which can be mobilised when descendants face difficulties (Delcroix, 2009). The combined study of family transmission processes and the influence of specific socio-political contexts shows how descendants can appropriate family history to the point of fostering local and transnational engagements, or conversely, distancing themselves from it (Lardeux, 2018).
The redefinition of family members’ identities also depends on the transmission of nationality, and sometimes dual nationality, which combines the legal norms of states with class, gender and race social relations (Clément, 2023). This transmission can play a key role in spatial and social mobility strategies. Finally, the reactivation of family ties in the transnational space allows some descendants of immigrants to inherit the nationality of their ancestors’ country and settle there permanently (Blanchard, 2022).
Studies employing the concepts of ‘family time’ (Imbert et al., 2018), successive generations (Rosental, 1999; Delcroix et al., 2022) and biographical temporalities (Bessin, 2009) have enabled us to examine the ways in which family experiences and memories of migration are transmitted, reactivated or erased within families.
The intergenerational temporality of the life course (Santelli, 2014) provides an interesting lens through which to consider the effects of intergenerational transmission on the descendants of migrants. But how can the experiences of one family member, shared with others and at the heart of the transmission process (Rachedi, 2009), contribute to the (re)construction of the relationship with family history and the family’s spaces? More specifically, how do the various processes of family transmission influence the relationships that migrants and their descendants have with places (in their daily lives, holidays, celebrations, jobs)?
It is also important to note that the transmission of family history in a migratory and post-migratory context should be understood beyond the family setting. Based on the meaning they attribute to their ancestors’ migration, individuals develop their positionality within a broader migratory space (Miranda, 2018, 2025). For some descendants, stories about their family history contribute to the development of a sense of ‘migrant legitimacy’ or even superiority over other migrant groups. These issues of positionality and legitimacy, arising from the dynamics of transmitting or not transmitting family and migration history, cannot be fully understood without considering the structuring social relationships. These social relationships, of class, gender, race or age, sometimes shaken up in situations of migration (Rosental, 1999; Collet and Santelli, 2012; Fillod-Chabaud and Odasso, 2022), influence the ways in which these histories are transmitted, obscured or reinterpreted. But how are these relationships constructed and negotiated in situations of transmission, and what intergenerational adjustments result within families?
*
Bessin, Marc (2009) Parcours de vie et temporalités biographiques : quelques éléments de problématique, Informations sociales, 156 (6), pp. 12‑21.
Blanchard, Melissa (2022) Être petit-fils ou petite-fille d’émigrés italiens au Chili : parenté et appartenance dans des familles transnationales, Anthropologie et Sociétés, 46 (2), pp. 45‑62.
Bourdieu, Jérôme ; Postel-Vinay, Gilles ; Rosental, Paul-André ; Suwa-Eisenmann, Akiko (2004) La dispersion spatiale des familles : un problème de taille. Les solidarités familiales de 1800 à 1940, Revue des politiques sociales et familiales, 77 (1), pp. 63‑72.
Clément, Garance (2023) Une nationalité d’appoint. Transmissions et usages stratégiques de la double nationalité dans les espaces frontaliers lillois et genevois, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, 39 (2), pp. 87‑108.
Collet, Beate ; Veith, Blandine (2013) Les faits migratoires au prisme de l’approche biographique, Migrations Société, 145 (1), pp. 37‑48.
Collet, Béate ; Santelli, Emmanuelle (2012) Couples d’ici, parents d’ailleurs. Parcours de descendants d’immigrés, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 354 p.
Courgeau, Daniel (1985) Bases théoriques et modèles pour une enquête sur la biographie familiale, professionnelle et migratoire, Espace, Populations, Sociétés, 1, pp. 240-247.
Delcroix, Catherine (2009) Transmission de l’histoire familiale et de la mémoire historique face à la précarité, Migrations Société, 123‑124 (3‑4), pp. 141‑158.
Delcroix, Catherine ; Le Gall, Josiane ; Pape, Élise (dirs.) (2022) Stratégies familiales et accès aux droits en contexte migratoire, Enfances Familles Générations, 41.
Demazière, Didier (2008) L’entretien biographique comme interaction négociations, contre-interprétations, ajustements de sens, Langage et société, 123 (1), pp. 15‑35.
Fillod-Chabaud, Aurélie ; Odasso, Laura (2022) Faire et défaire les liens familiaux : Usages et pratiques du droit en contexte migratoire, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 212 p.
Genard, Jean-Louis ; Roca i Escoda, Marta (2010) La « rupture épistémologique » du chercheur au prix de la trahison des acteurs ? Les tensions entre postures « objectivante » et « participante » dans l’enquête sociologique, Éthique publique. Revue internationale d’éthique sociétale et gouvernementale, 12 (1), pp. 139‑163.
Imbert, Christophe ; Lelièvre, Éva ; Lessault, David (dirs.) (2018) La famille à distance : Mobilités, territoires et liens familiaux, La famille à distance : Mobilités, territoires et liens familiaux, Paris, Ined Éditions, 376 p.
Lardeux, Laurent (2018)
Marcus, George E. (1995) Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24 (1), pp. 95‑117.
Miranda, Adelina (2025) Les descendant·es des Italien·nes en France. Espaces généalogiques et élaboration d’une positionalité hégémonique, Colloque international : Migrations & transmissions, Poitiers, France.
Miranda, Adelina (2019) Le (in)dicible et l’(in)audible. Pour une approche méthodologique biographique intersectionnelle située, Journées d'étude : Expériences de migration en contexte de violence ou quand raconter devient impossible. Approche comparée France-Québec pour un dialogue entre migrants, praticiens et chercheurs, Poitiers, France.
Miranda, Adelina (2018) Recompositions familiales en situations migratoires, Trocadero. Revista del Departamento de Historia Moderna, Contemporánea, de América y del Arte, 30, pp. 75‑93.
Prestini, Mireille (2006) La notion de transmission : un analyseur de la décision d’adultes d’entrer en formation ?, Pensée plurielle, 11 (1), pp. 99‑107.
Rachedi, Zineb (2009) Travail et transmissions familiales en contexte migratoire : Regards croisés père-fille, Migrations Société, 123‑124 (3‑4), pp. 159‑175.
Rosental, Paul-André (1999) Les sentiers invisibles : Espaces, familles et migrations dans la France du XIXᵉ siècle, Paris, Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 256 p.
Rosental, Paul-André (1990) Maintien/rupture : un nouveau couple pour l’analyse des migrations, Annales, 45 (6), pp. 1403‑1431.
Santelli, Emmanuelle (2014) La temporalité intergénérationnelle, une dimension incontournable des parcours, Temporalités, 20.
Séhili, Djaouida et Zúñiga, Víctor (2014) Une lecture des migrations au prisme des savoirs et des ressources, Migrations Société, 153‑154 (3‑4), pp. 83‑94.