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 rapid expansion of global digital platforms and services (i.e., Netflix, Spotify, etc.) has profoundly altered the contemporary media landscape. While much scholarly attention has focused on the disruptive economic and technological impacts of these services and platforms, less has been said about how their (vocal) commitments to diversity, combined with the social demands for more inclusive representation, are shaping, challenging, and at times catalyzing change within legacy media institutions. Among these institutions, public service media (PSM) occupy a distinctive space as they hold a unique mandate to reflect and serve the full spectrum of society. However, their historical record on social and cultural inclusion is mixed, with critiques that they have often fallen short of providing meaningful visibility, voice, and participation for disadvantaged or underrepresented groups. In the digital age, these challenges have intensified. Not only are PSM responding to commercial pressures and new forms of audience segmentation, but they are also called upon to address intensified demands for representation, inclusion, and social cohesion.

This thematic issue invites scholars and practitioners to critically examine the role of legacy media in promoting social and cultural inclusion in the digital age, and the ways in which legacy media negotiate and enact the representation and inclusion of differences across a wide spectrum of social and cultural dimensions. We welcome contributions that interrogate how PSM diversity discourses, policies, and practices are evolving in response to the pressure of the market and society, and how these strategies contribute—or fail to contribute—to social and cultural inclusion. How are PSM reimagining their public service mission and adapting their organizational models to foster more inclusive representation and participation? How do their strategies compare to those of global, local, and/or regional streaming services? What lessons can be drawn for building more socially inclusive media systems worldwide? 

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.

Family Language Policy (FLP) has become an influential research area within different disciplines such as sociolinguistics (King et al., 2008; Obojska & Purkarthofer, 2018), language policy research (Chen & Ni, 2024; Chimbutane & Gonçalves, 2023; Curdt-Christiansen, 2018), childhood studies (Cox et al., 2021; Smith-Christmas, 2022), education (Thoma, 2025), and psychology (Fatima & Nadeem, 2025; Pagé & Noels, 2024).

While pioneering FLP research was concerned with language ideologies and language acquisition processes typically within traditional nuclear families, more recent studies have expanded their focus to include how language ideologies, practices, and management unfold within both traditional and non-traditional family configurations (Xeketwana et al., 2025), including extended families (Molate & McKinney, 2024; Soler & Roberts, 2019), foster or adoptive families (Purkarthofer et al., 2022), and geographically dispersed families (Bose et al., 2023). Beyond the individual level, research has further traced FLP processes across families (Kusters et al., 2021) and explored interconnections with educational institutions (Ballweg, 2022; Maseko & Mutasa, 2018; Spyrou Ntetsika et al., 2023) and with the state (Lomeu Gomes et al., 2024). Recent publications shed light on children’s agency and perspectives in FLP (Maseko, 2022; Panagiotopoulou et al., 2023; Smith-Christmas, 2022) and on digital practices in family communication (Almegren, 2025; Curdt-Christiansen & Iwaniec, 2023). There is growing recognition that FLP is deeply implicated in broader processes of marginalization and social inequality—particularly in contexts of globalization, (post)colonial language policies, minoritized language communities, and socioeconomic exclusion (Mirvahedi, 2023; Schnitzer, 2023). Despite this recognition, the intersections between FLP and structural forms of marginalization (e.g., assimilation pressures, unequal access to resources, racialization, and socioeconomic stratification) remain under-theorized and empirically underexplored.

Building on foundational work that conceptualizes FLP as a nexus of language beliefs, practices, and management within the family domain (Spolsky, 2012), this thematic issue seeks to foreground the ways in which structural conditions shape—and are shaped by—the experiences of multilingual families. We invite contributions that examine FLP in relation to marginalization, language and educational policies, racialization, socioeconomic disadvantage, disability, heteronormativity, and other axes of differentiation (Gal & Irvine, 2019), as well as studies that document resilience, resistance, agency, and inclusion strategies enacted by families and other social actors in diverse settings.

This thematic issue is international in scope, seeking comparative and contextually grounded research that illuminates how FLP intersects with macro-level processes of access, participation, and social justice. We welcome both empirical and conceptual contributions from a variety of epistemological and methodological approaches, including (but not limited to) critical theoretical work, decolonial scholarship, and arts-based methods. By embracing diverse linguistic and cultural contexts, the issue aims to chart new directions in FLP research that advance understanding of processes marginalization in multilingual postcolonial and post-migrant societies.

References

Almegren, R. (2025). Educational language choice and the role of technology: Parental attitudes, decision factors and multilingual learning practices in the digital age. Saudi Journal of Language Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/SJLS-05-2025-0037

Ballweg, S. (2022). Anticipating expectations. Family language policy and its orientation to the school system. International Journal of Multilingualism, 1S(2), 251–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2022.2033756

Chen, Y., & Ni, L. (2024). Family language policy in Chinese d/Deaf-parented families with hearing children: The interplay of multi-dimensional factors. Language Policy, 23(1), 75–103. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-023-09680-5

Chimbutane, F., & Gonçalves, P. (2023). Family language policy and language shift in postcolonial Mozambique: A critical, multi-layered approach. Language Policy, 22(3), 267–287. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-023-09658-3

Cox, R. B., deSouza, D. K., Bao, J., Lin, H., Sahbaz, S., Greder, K. A., Larzelere, R. E., Washburn, I. J., Leon-Cartagena, M., & Arredondo-Lopez, A. (2021). Shared language erosion: Rethinking immigrant family communication and impacts on youth development. Children, 8(4), Article 256. https://doi.org/10.3390/children8040256

Curdt-Christiansen, X. L. (2018). Family language policy. In J. W. Tollefson & M. Pérez-Milans (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language policy and planning (pp. 420–441). Oxford University Press.

Curdt-Christiansen, X. L., & Iwaniec, J. (2023). ‘妈妈, I miss you ‘: Emotional multilingual practices in transnational families. International Journal of Bilingualism, 27(2), 159–180. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069221125342

Fatima, S., & Nadeem, M. U. (2025). Family language policy and heritage language transmission in Pakistan: The intersection of family dynamics, ethnic identity and cultural practices on language proficiency and maintenance. Frontiers in Psychology, 1C, Article 1560755. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1560755

Gal, S., & Irvine, J. T. (2019). Signs of difference. Language and ideology in social life. Cambridge University Press.

King, K. A., Fogle, L., & Logan-Terry, A. (2008). Family language policy. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(5), 907–922.

Kusters, A., De Meulder, M., & Napier, J. (2021). Family language policy on holiday: Four multilingual signing and speaking families travelling together. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 42(8), 698–715. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2021.1890752

Lomeu Gomes, R., Lanza, E., & Athari, Z. (2024). (Nanny) State as family by proxy. Journal of Multilingual Theories and Practices, 4(2), 265–287. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.26482

Maseko, B. (2022). Children’s agency in parent-child discourses: A study of family language policy in a Ndebele heritage language family. Per Linguam, 38(2). https://doi.org/10.5785/38-2-990

Maseko, B., & Mutasa, D. (2018). The influence of Kalanga parents’ language ideologies on children’s language practices. Language Matters, 4S(3), 47–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/10228195.2018.1496132

Mirvahedi, S. H. (2023). Family, a racialized space: A phenomenological approach to examining Afghan refugee families’ language policies in Norway. Language Policy, 22(4), 413–432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-023-09671-6

Molate, B., & McKinney, C. (2024). Resisting the coloniality of language through languaging and making of a multilingual ikhaya in South Africa. Journal of Multilingual Theories and Practices, 4(2), 201–222. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.26058

Obojska, M. A., & Purkarthofer, J. (2018). ‘And all of a sudden, it became my rescue’: Language and agency in transnational families in Norway. International Journal of Multilingualism, 15(3), 249–261. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2018.1477103

Pagé, L. L., & Noels, K. A. (2024). Family language policy retention across generations: Childhood language policies, multilingualism experiences, and future language policies in multilingual emerging Canadian adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1394027. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1394027

Panagiotopoulou, J., Uçan, Y., & Samani, D. (2023). Familiensprachpolitik zwischen Spracherwerb und Spracherhalt: Ergebnisse zu den Perspektiven von Kindern aus dem Lehrforschungsprojekt „Family Language Policy in Deutschland (FaMiLanG). Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht, 28(2), 111–133. https://doi.org/10.48694/zif.3654

Purkarthofer, J., Lanza, E., & Berg, M. F. (2022). Discourses between the public and the private: Transnational families at the crossroads. Applied Linguistics, 43(3), 563–586. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amab053

Schnitzer, A. (2023). Negotiations of language(s) and inequalities in transnational family biographies. European Educational Research Journal, 22(4), 496–516. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041221147970

Smith-Christmas, C. (2022). Using a ‘Family Language Policy’ lens to explore the dynamic and relational nature of child agency. Children & Society, 3C(3), 354–368. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12461

Soler, J., & Roberts, T. (2019). Parents’ and grandparents’ views on home language regimes: Language ideologies and trajectories of two multilingual families in Sweden. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 1C(4), 249–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2018.1564878

Spolsky, B. (2012). Family language policy—The critical domain. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 33(1), 3–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2011.638072

Spyrou Ntetsika, I., Knappik, M., & Thoma, N. (2023). Living transnational lives: Languages, education and senses of belonging across three generations of a Greek-German bilingual family. Linguistics and Education, 78, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2022.101143

Thoma, N. (2025). ‘Good parenting’ and linguistic responsibility: Challenging linguistic hierarchisations in German-language ECEC in South Tyrol, Italy. Ethnography and Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2025.2513909

Xeketwana, S., Xeketwana, N., & Anthonissen, C. (2025). Family language policy: Choices in isiXhosa families and implications for multilingual education. Reading & Writing, 1C(1), Article a531. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v16i1.531

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.

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 Britian’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.