Call for papers Issue 48/2027

2026-03-12

Between Proximity and Distance: Methodological and epistemological challenges in studying communities in Central and Eastern Europe.

Guest editors: 

Tomasz Błaszczak (Vytautas Magnus University)

Violetta Parutis (Vytautas Magnus University & University of Essex)

Central and Eastern Europe has long been framed in academic and public discourse as a ‘problematic region’: post-socialist, post-traumatic, politically fragile, and perpetually catching up with Western modernity. Its societies have often been analyzed through lenses of deficit, transition, or incompleteness. In recent decades, the region has frequently been described through narratives of emigration, demographic decline, post-socialist trauma, and social closure. Yet recent global crises—most notably Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, but also broader geopolitical shifts and insecurities—challenge this established framing. Countries long perceived as migrant-sending, cautious, or even xenophobic have rapidly become spaces of arrival, transit, and settlement, marked by the emergence of new forms of solidarity, hospitality, and civic engagement.

This thematic issue starts from the hypothesis that Central and Eastern Europe may no longer be understood solely as a region reacting to global crises, but rather as a space where such crises are translated into concrete social, cultural, and moral practices.