Open call for the Dossier Ethnographies with immigrant children and youth in Ibero-America

Organization: Tais Cristina Samora de Figueiredo (Complutense University of Madrid) and Frank Marcon (Federal University of Sergipe).

In recent years, the immigration of children and young people in Ibero-America has intensified, driven by political conflicts; climate change; the search for opportunities to improve their lives, study, or work; and transnational family reconfigurations. At the same time, there has been a strengthening of immigration policies of control and exclusion, which directly impact the lives of these individuals and their possibilities for integration in destination countries. Children and young people face unique conditions when they immigrate, related to the rupture of their cultural references and their social and emotional ties to their origins. This involves symbolic, linguistic, ethnic, and educational differences, which affect their self-construction during migration, and expose them to social insecurity and unequal institutional treatment, sometimes exposing them to situations of vulnerability.

In this dossier, we seek to bring together the results of research on the immigrant experiences of children and youth in different contexts in Ibero-America, promoting a critical and interdisciplinary debate on the presence of children and youth in the region's migratory flows, with an emphasis on ethnographic approaches sensitive to the voices, practices, and social contexts of these individuals.

Submissions for this dossier are welcome if they address one or more of the following issues:

• forced displacement or voluntary immigration of children and youth with or without family members, as well as the impacts on their well-being, considering the different origins and flows, taking Ibero-American countries as the reference destination;

• different reception policies and practices in the receiving countries, particularly social, cultural, educational, identity, and linguistic policies, considering the diverse experiences of children and youth in immigration;

• the adverse, sometimes violent, situations faced by children and youth regarding access to basic human rights and civil rights in the host country, considering their ethnic, linguistic, religious, and racial background; and

• the forms and trajectories of organization, action, and resistance built by the experience of immigration, demanding the affirmation of their personal, social, cultural, and political existences and the construction of their collective identities.

The dossier is open to anthropological approaches to the topic, as well as interdisciplinary perspectives in the field of migration studies, seeking to promote dialogue with other areas of knowledge that consider the voices, practices, and social contexts of immigrants. Papers in Portuguese, Spanish, or English are accepted.

ATTENTION

When submitting your article for this dossier, be sure to select the CHILD AND YOUTH IMMIGRATION DOSSIER section. The dossier will be published in the January-June 2026 issue.

You can also submit papers in a continuous stream to the FREE SECTIONS. In this case, submissions should be made in the ARTICLE, TRANSLATION, REVIEW, or INTERVIEW sections.

Translations, reviews, and interviews, even when related to the dossier's theme, should be submitted in the corresponding section.

Submission deadline: March 15, 2026