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Journal of Haitian Studies – Special Issue: Call for Abstracts (Mar. 30, 2025)


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Call for Abstracts (Click here to download)

Special Issue: Journal of Haitian Studies

‘Citizens of the World/Citoyens du monde/Sitwayen Mond Lan/Ciudadanos del Mundo’: Haitian Mobilities and Futurities across the Americas

Guest Editors

George MacLeod, Associate Professor of French, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

April J. Mayes, Professor of History, Pomona College

Natasha Swiderski, Ph.D Candidate McMaster University

Special Issue Description

As highlighted at the Haitian Studies Association conference in October 2023, there is growing scholarship on Haitian mobilities from researchers in the U.S., Canada, France, and Latin America. At the same time, there is an urgent need to document human rights violations against Haitians in transit and advocate for more humane policies across the hemisphere. This special issue will bring together scholars, artists, and advocates to explore the shift in Haitian migration, with a focus on Haiti’s diaspora with particular attention to Central America, South America, and Mexico.

Our issue, “‘Citizens of the World’: Haitian Mobilities and Futurities across the Americas,” engages with the demand by the Critical Refugee Studies Collective (2022) to place (re)situate refugee epistemologies and lifeworlds at the very center of knowledge production. Drawing inspiration from Ustin Pascal Dubuisson’s Sobrevivientes: ciudadanos del mundo (2018), we invite abstract submissions that explore how Haitians in mobility reject labels like “refugee” and instead position themselves as survivors and global citizens, challenging the humanitarian narrative of the victim needing rescue. Haitians in mobility offer new, self-generated narratives that challenge contemporary humanitarian ideologies.

We also welcome abstract submissions that reframe terms like migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker not as objects of rescue but as critical sites for social and political critique. This paradigm also invites us to think about both mobility and immobility, such as those Haitians who are unable or unwilling to leave their homeland.

Through this special issue, we seek to highlight the innovative resistances of Haitians against carceral migration systems. Our goal is to move beyond documenting anti-Haitian and anti-Blackness and towards liberatory representations of Black life. The issue will highlight Haitians’ adaptiveness and self-determination as they build new lives across the Americas and beyond, while also critiquing the state’s role in managing mobility and restricting freedom.

We welcome abstract submissions in English, French, Kreyòl, and Spanish from a broad range of disciplines and methodologies including, but not limited to, the Arts and Humanities, Journalism, Social Sciences, Political Science, Migration Studies, Gender Studies, Health Studies, Public Policy, Geography, Labor and Economics.

Possible topics could include:

    1. Global citizenship
    2. Mobilities and resistance
    3. Futurities of Haitian mobilities
    4. Gendered narratives and self-representation
    5. Diaspora Networks
    6. LGBTQ+ Mobilities
    7. Environmental migration patterns
    8. Racialized migration policies
    9. Cultural adaptation and community building
    10. Labor and economic contributions
    11. Activism and advocacy
    12. Human rights
    13. Health and migration
    14. Art and Journalism

Submission Guidelines

–350 word (approximate) abstract proposal for:

–a full length academic article, ranging between 3,000 to 7,500 words.

–literary or creative prose, interviews, oral histories, interviews, lesson plans, etc.

–art, photo-essays, and other creative modes of knowledge diffusion

Note: For full submission guidelines, please visit: https://www.haitianstudies.org/journal-of-haitian-studies/journal-of-haitian-studies-guidelines-for-contributors/.

How to Apply

For full consideration, abstracts should be emailed to JOHS@haitianstudies.ucsb.edu by March 30, 2025.

Abstract decisions will be sent by April 13, 2025.

Full articles will be due August 1, 2025

Publication is planned for 2026.

Text-based contributions should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents. All other formats incompatible with MS Word may be submitted in PDFs. All questions are welcomed and should be addressed to JOHS@haitianstudies.ucsb.edu.


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