Abstracts Submission

Working life is undergoing its most profound transformation since the Industrial Revolution. Globalization, demographic shifts, and digitalization have already reshaped the world of work—and continue to challenge traditional models. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this shift, pushing work further into digital and flexible formats. This convergence of trends presents a critical challenge for Norway and other European welfare states: How to ensure safe, healthy, and inclusive work environments that support work–life balance across all life stages? Labour law and social security law may play a key role in this.

Even before the pandemic, work–life balance was a priority for policymakers, reflected in the EU’s European Pillar of Social Rights and the 2019 Work-life Balance Directive. Yet, legal frameworks lag behind the rapid shift of work into the private sphere. National laws must evolve to meet the demands of a more flexible, digital, and ageing workforce. Remote work, for instance, remains largely unregulated.

Two key tools in promoting work–life balance and addressing inequality are: (a) flexible working arrangements and (b) access to paid leave. Equally important is ensuring protection against discrimination for those who use these tools. It has become crucial to shed light on what role tripartism and corporate social responsibility hold in achieving work–life balance.

For this thematic issue, we encourage interested authors to submit proposals on relevant issues surrounding flexible work arrangements—particularly employees’ autonomy over working time (e.g. right to disconnect) and location (e.g., home office, remote work, "workation"), and how flexible work arrangements are regulated under labour law. On this front, both country-specific analyses and cross-border perspectives are welcome. Within the EU context, special attention should be given to the implementation of the Work–Life Balance Directive and the Working Time Directive.

Another important thematic area concerns leave entitlements, such as maternity, paternity, and parental leave, as well as carers’ leave and annual leave. Here, the interaction between labour law and social security law is of particular interest.

Finally, a perspective grounded in anti-discrimination law is also relevant—specifically, whether employees are adequately protected against discrimination when exercising rights to flexible work, paternity leave, or carers’ leave.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Social Inclusion is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

The proposed thematic issue recognizes time as a key dimension of social inclusion in transition processes across education, care, and counselling contexts. The thematic issue wants to highlight that transitions are not neutral passages but practices, which are socially produced in the context of “doing transitions”—this means structured by normative temporalities that privilege linearity, acceleration, and predictability. Especially for marginalized groups like youth with disabilities, care leavers, refugees, and first-generation students, strict timelines and deadlines, diagnostic framings, and standardized time practices can turn transitions into sites of exclusion.

Policy and professional discourses typically frame inclusion as access, participation, or equal opportunity, treating transitions as functional bridges between statuses. Yet implicit time models, such as deadlines, age thresholds, funding windows, “readiness” or societal expectations, and so on, govern who can get accustomed and follow institutional time(tables). Experiences of waiting, interruption, biographical discontinuity, and the mismatch between institutional and subjective time regimes (Eigenzeit) reveal how time norms produce differentiation and hierarchy.

By bringing transition research, inclusive education, and critical time studies into dialogue, this thematic issue wants to advance a normative–critical temporal perspective: Inclusion requires pluralizing time. We invite contributions that make temporal orders explicit, analyse how they shape subjectivation and exclusion, and propose transformative time arrangements. Relevant frameworks include temporal justice, crip time, politics of time, and theories of acceleration and becoming.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Social Inclusion is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

Contemporary European societies are characterised by an unprecedented degree of diversity (linguistic, cultural, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic), challenging the foundations of traditional educational systems. The concept of superdiversity, which moves beyond binary majority–minority frameworks to account for the complex intersectionality of identities and trajectories, reflects the lived reality of classrooms, schools, and universities across the continent. However, educational policies and pedagogical practices have often lagged behind this transformation, generating tensions between normative aspirations for inclusion and the structural conditions shaping everyday educational contexts.

This thematic issue brings together interdisciplinary scholarship examining how educational systems across Europe and beyond are responding, or failing to respond, to the challenges and opportunities posed by diversity. Drawing on sociology, educational science, political science, and intercultural studies, the issue addresses four interconnected dimensions: the normative and policy frameworks governing diversity in education; the social implications of superdiversity for educational communities, particularly the tension between demands for equality and differentiation in everyday school situations; the pedagogical approaches, teacher education strategies, and curricular innovations aimed at fostering inclusive learning environments; and the perspectives of key actors, including students, educators, institutions, and civil society.

Finally, the issue aims to critically examine whether inclusion can be considered a new paradigm for understanding social cohesion, alongside established models such as multiculturalism and assimilationism, and their respective contributions to the educational field.

The issue welcomes original research, systematic reviews, and theoretically grounded contributions that engage with multiculturalism, intercultural education, diversity management, social cohesion, and inclusive educational practice in formal and non-formal settings across all educational levels. Comparative, cross-national, and transdisciplinary perspectives are particularly encouraged, as are contributions documenting good practices and innovative approaches.

By bringing these conversations into dialogue, this issue advances scholarly understanding and evidence-based policy reflection on one of the most pressing challenges facing European and global educational systems today.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Social Inclusion is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 100 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

Internal and international migration are often discussed in different intellectual and political spaces which obscures important common features. Internal (or domestic) migration, typically referring to movement from rural to urban areas, is frequently construed as an important mechanism—sometimes planned, although often not—that facilitates economic development, urbanisation and the more effective utilisation of the factors of production. Equally migration has regularly been blamed for escalating housing costs, causing over-crowding, and resulting in the development of slums and criminality.

International migration is simultaneously viewed as a cornerstone of global development, necessary according to the UN International Organization for Migration for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals 1, 3, 8,10, 13 and 16, while others portray it as ‘invasion’ and a mechanism of ‘civilizational erasure’.  While most international migration is economic and legal, governed by work permits and quotas and driven by demand for workers and people’s aspirations for career development and a better life, political attention tends to focus on illicit migration, asylum seekers and refugees.

Much political discourse is framed from the perspective of host communities establishing rules that limit the right of migrants to enter cities and countries and/or to enjoy services available to natives. Academic research has tended to be disproportionately quantitative focused on stocks, flows and spatial concentrations. Where the aspirations and experiences of migrants have been considered, often they have been dissected into variables that lose connection with the people whose experiences they index.

What has frequently been neglected is the story of the migrant experience told from the perspective of migrants themselves. The suspicion is that, examined through this lens, international and domestic migrants share many salient characteristics with respect to motivations, work experience, achievements, challenges, exploitation, humiliation and resilience. It is possible, too, that for some, the costs of migration outweigh the benefits.

Therefore, this thematic issue is structured as a natural experiment adopting a maximum difference design. Divided into two sections, the first will contain articles invited to focus on the experience of domestic migrants in China, the second section will comprise articles on the experience of international migrants into the United Kingdom. The editorial will present an analysis of the articles drawing attention to similarities and differences in the experiences of internal and international migrants. It will equally explore the trade-offs that migrants make when seeking to migrate and in accommodating to the place of destination and their success in ensuring that benefits of migration outweigh the costs.

Over the last 45 years, China has experienced the largest internal migration in history. This has transformed China from a mostly rural society to an urban one, facilitated unprecedented industrial and commercial growth and China’s emergence as the world’s second largest economy, and contributed to lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty. There is evidence, though, that China’s economic success has been achieved in part by personal and familial sacrifices made rural-urban migrants that go largely unrecognised in public discourse.

Britain, its culture shaped over millennia by waves of inward migration, has nevertheless been transformed into a multicultural society since the 1950s, notably in the last 45 years. In 1951, the foreign-born population comprised 4.3 percent of the total. This proportion was still only 6.6 percent in 1981 but, by 2021, it had risen to 77 percent. In 1951, 99.9 percent of the population was white as was 96 percent in 1981. In marked contrast, by 2021/2 29.4 percent of the population was not white. Although migrants have been largely absorbed into Britain’s labour market, sometimes undertaking work shunned by the host population, migration has nevertheless become a toxic political issue. Internal migration intensity has declined over this period despite high mobility for certain age groups.

Research articles are invited dealing with the life experiences of (1) internal migrants and their families in China or (2) international migrants and their families into the United Kingdom. There are no constraints on the research methodologies employed provided that they seek to capture the lived experiences of migrants. Articles that discuss the challenges confronted by migrants and report on how migrants maximise the benefits accruing from migration are particularly welcome.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Social Inclusion is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 100 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

The introduction of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) as an eligibility criterion for Horizon Europe has, in many cases, acted as a catalyst for advancing structural change towards gender equality in research and innovation (R&I). However, their implementation remains uneven across national and institutional contexts, particularly in Southeast Europe, where distinct historical trajectories, governance traditions, and institutional capacities shape opportunities for change. Higher education and research systems have evolved through different political, organisational and cultural pathways, resulting in diverse responses to common European policy initiatives. Consequently, the design, implementation, monitoring and institutionalisation of GEPs remain deeply embedded in national and institutional contexts.

However, institutions are not static. Critical junctures, such as the Horizon Europe GEP eligibility requirement, alongside broader societal debates, leadership changes and organisational developments, can create opportunities for institutional actors to challenge established practices. Nonetheless, institutional change in higher education and research is rarely abrupt or linear. Instead, it tends to occur incrementally through processes whereby new gender equality rules, structures and practices are added onto existing institutional arrangements rather than replacing them entirely.

This thematic issue examines how GEPs are designed, implemented, evaluated, and sustained within Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) and Research Funding Organisations (RFOs) across Southeast Europe. Bringing together empirical studies from Albania, Croatia, Greece, Romania, and regional collaborations, the contributions draw on institutional theory, feminist institutionalism, and critical perspectives on neoliberal governance to explore how organisations navigate legal, normative, and other institutional pressures, resulting in processes of layering, conversion, adaptation, and resistance. The articles will examine mentoring, participatory evaluation, stakeholder engagement, communities of practice, and the relational dimensions of institutional change, including care, solidarity, and feminist counter-resistance. Collectively, they demonstrate that sustainable GEP implementation depends not only on formal policy adoption but also on organisational learning, contextual adaptation, collaborative governance and sustained institutional commitment. By foregrounding the experiences of Southeast Europe, this thematic issue advances debates on gender equality governance and institutional transformation while offering theoretical insights and practical lessons for policymakers, funding organisations and higher education institutions.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Social Inclusion is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 100 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.