Alexandra König and Jessica Schwittek , together with Viorela Telegdi-Csetri, are pleased to be editing a Special Issue in the British journal Families, Relationships and Societies. The Special Issue, “Living apart together: Growing up in Transnational Families”, will be published in February 2025.

Transnational family life has become both a growing empirical phenomenon and a conceptual lens through which families’ multilocal spaces and relations become visible. The reasons for families to “live apart together” are based on a multitude of individual and collective motives. Depending on the economic, social and cultural capital of the families, their transnational arrangements and practices play out differently. Research so far has mostly focused on the alleged decision-makers, namely adults, who are usually considered the key figures in migration processes. Children and youth in transnational families are often viewed as more passive or vulnerable and subject to their parents’ choices. In a current German-Polish research project funded by DFG and NCN, König/Schwittek apply a child-centered perspective to grasp how they perceive and evaluate transnational family arrangements. As part of this project, Schwittek organized a conference which took place at the University of Essen, Germany in April 2023, bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of researchers whose contributions offered fresh perspectives on transnational arrangements.

Based on selected papers presented and discussed during the conference, our Special Issue for FRS offers current research on (growing up in) transnational families, based on innovative methodological approaches. The selected studies focus on new, changing or persisting conditions, figurations, practices, and discursive representations of transnational families in different societies, considering both mobile and “left-behind” or immobile actors, inspiring a theoretical discussion around the normative concepts of childhood and family. The extent to which societies consider transnational or mobile families as being at odds with normative patterns of family, childhood, and parenthood differs, both within societies and between them. Our Special Issue therefore highlights the variability of intergenerational solidarity and evaluation of transnational families on individual, local and global dimensions, allowing us to explore the potential of research on transnational families for the analysis of society and social order more broadly.

A report, written by Adrienne Lee Atterberry (Union College, New York), on our international conference „Living apart together: Growing up in Transnational Families“ was published in the Journal for Sociology of Education and Socialization (ZSE), issue 4/2023. We are pleased to have such a nice review of the three-day conference in April 2023.

You can download Atterberry's report (see below).

The complete ZSE issue can be found here.

The "Emerald Handbook of Childhood and Youth in Asian Societies: Generations Between Local and Global Dynamics" is dedicated to growing up in the context of social, cultural and economic change processes in Asian societies. The volume brings together contributions by scholars from Asia and Europe whose research aims to give voice to young people and to reconstruct their perspectives. Established concepts and analytical frameworks of (Western-influenced) childhood and youth research are critically scrutinized and further developed on the basis of empirical analyses.

As editors and authors of the handbook Prof Dr. Doris Bühler-Niederberger (University of Wuppertal), Dr. Xiaorong Gu (University of Suffolk), Dr. Elizer Jay de los Reyes (University of Southampton) and Dr. Jessica Schwittek (University of Duisburg-Essen) will be present at the book launch. Short presentations will provide insights into the focal points of the volume and selected contributions. Afterwards, a panel discussion will provide an opportunity to learn more about the field of childhood and youth research in Asian societies and to engage in conversation with the guests.

The book launch will take place on Wednesday, January 24, from 17:00-19:00
Location: Campus Essen, Room S06 S00 A40

Alexandra König and Annette Schnabel (University of Düsseldorf) have a new article on the topic of animals and gender:

In Mainz on September 5, 2023, Alexandra König will present the opening lecture with the topic "The Search for the Best Parents" at the annual conference of the Joint Central Adoption Agency Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse (Gemeinsame Zentralle Adoptionsstelle) for professionals of public and independent adoption agencies from Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Saarland.

Alexandra König will be represented twice at the upcoming conference in Vienna.

First she will present the topic "Temporäre Arbeitsmigration als Herausforderung generationaler Arrangements" (Temporary work migration as a challenge for generational arrangements). 

Her second presentation will be on the topic "Elternschaft qua Vermittlung – Adoptionsfamilien als alternative Form der Familiengründung" (Parenthood as agents - Adoptive families as an alternative form of family formations).

The University of Duisburg-Essen was the victim of a cyberattack in November, forcing everyone offline, but the Work Group Socialisation Research  didn't let this setback slow us down.

For our bi-national research project on children in transnational families, we are interpreting group discussions, the last of the children's books have been translated from Polish to English, and the final preparations for the international conference are underway. 

The international workshop "Living apart together: Growing up in transnational families" will take place from April 27-29 and bring together researchers from all around the world. Our goal is to to present and discuss different perspectives on transnational families. We can't wait!

Under the title Childhood and Youth from a Global Perspective the Work Group Socialisation Research organises a virtual teaching cooperation with lecturers and students of Ton Duc University in Ho-Chi-Minh-City in the summer semester. The cooperation brings students of both universitites closer together and boosts exchange about childhood and youth. Students from Germany present findings about childhood and youth in their country in bi-national student groups, while the lecturers provide input on specialist lectures and invite students to discuss in meetings.

The presentation of the project can be viewed on the website of Training Workshop online: https://lehrwerkstatt.zhqe.uni-due.de/childhood_youth/

Out of a shared curiosity a collective article about questions of demarcation between animals and human beings emerged: Annette Schnabel and I looked at "animal professionals", namely police dogs and horses.
On this matter, we explored the animal-human relation in modern times, especially the interspecies-demarcation as a process of saying and doing in a professional context. The result will be published soon in the volume "Posthuman? Neue Perspektiven auf Natur/Kultur" published by Torsten Cress, Oliwia Murawska & Annika Schlitte under the title: "Von Menschen und Tieren in der Moderne – Zur Professionalisierung von Tieren" (König/Schnabel)

The Section Education starts an online-colloquium. In accordance with recent challenges, we want to discuss the topic "What the Pandemic does to Education" in the first block. There will be three talks and a discussion afterwards:

Thursday, 15/04/21, 17:00 - 18:30: Prof Dr Thomas Spiegler (Theological College Friedensau)
Stell dir vor es ist Schule und keiner geht hin. Realisierungsoptionen des Lockdown Learnings aus der Perspektive traditionellen Homeschoolings.
 
Thursday, 29/04/21, 17:00 - 18:30: Dr Regina Soremski (Justus-Liebig-University Gießen)
„Ich habe immer schon gemocht, mich selbst zu organisieren“ – Biografische Perspektiven Jugendlicher auf Schule und Freizeit unter Pandemiebedingungen
 
Thursday, 20/05/21, 17:00 - 18:30: Dr Susanne Roßnagl, Mag Wolfgang Hagleitner und Dr Livia Jesacher-Rößle (University Innsbruck)
Veränderte Berufs- und Ausbildungswahl von Jugendlichen in Zeiten der Pandemie? Ausgewählte Befunde einer österreichischen Längsschnittstudie.

You will find the link to the virtual conference rooms in the newsletter provided by the Section. If you are not getting the newsletter, feel free to contact me as a speaker of the Section. A registration is not required - just tune in!

In the latest Special Issue that I edited with Elisabeth Schilling for FQS, methodogical and methodological questions of qualitative research on time are being discussed with various research projects as examples:

Special Issue Challenging Times—Methods and Methodological Approaches to Qualitative Research on Time (with Elisabeth Schilling) [16 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 21(2), Art. 27, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-21.2.3508 

Dr. Alexandra König has been habilitated with her postdoctoral thesis "Spielfelder des Selbst - Eine Längsschnittstudie zu jungen Erwachsenen in Handwerksbetrieben, Hochschulen und Kunstakademien" and the presentation with the colloquium on "Juvenile taste-alliances as seen in the example of shopping" as well as a field of study related lecture on the topic of "Introduction into interpretative social research".

The postdoctoral thesis has been approved by three expert reports and the unanimous decision of the habilitation committee. On the 27th of July 2017 the habilitation committee has granted Mrs König the teaching qualification in Sociology unanimously.
The faculty council of the Faculty for Human and Social Sciences has conferred the teaching qualification (venia legendi) in Sociology unanimously on the 25th of October 2017.

Her monograph will be published by Juventa in early 2019.