This is the second issue of the Ethnic and Racial Studies Review for 2021. We hope that both our regular readers and the wider scholarly and research communities that we serve will find something of interest to them in the pages of this issue. Although we are still in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic we have been able to carry on with all of the on-going work of the journal during this challenging period, thanks in large part to the support of our authors, peer reviewers and of course our publishers.
In this issue we are able to include four wide ranging research papers that we very much hope will be of interest to various groupings of scholars within the communities served by the journal on a global basis. The first of these papers is by Steven Vertovec and it is focused on a conceptual analysis of the social organization of difference. Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives Vertovec frames his account around the need to develop the conceptual tools that will allow us to make sense of developing forms of diversity, difference and social change. He suggests that in the contemporary conjuncture there is an urgent need to move beyond taken for granted assumptions and develop a more nuanced and granular approach to these issues.
The second paper in this issue is by Miri Song and addresses an important question that is being discussed in a wide range of societies, namely the question of who “counts” as multiracial. As a leading scholar in this area of scholarship and research Song offers a masterful overview of this phenomenon and brings together important research findings from both the U.S. and the UK to explore the complexities about how people of racially mixed heritage are defined and how these definitions have evolved and changed over time. She suggests that it is important to develop a nuanced understanding of this issue, since the issue of who “counts” as multiracial can have an impact of both conversations about race in diverse societies and on policy interventions.
The third paper is by Jerel Ezell and it is focused on how efforts to decolonize and reorganize Wikipedia and other online spaces to address issues about racial equity can provide an important resource for those who are interested in developing new interventions to tackle the legacies of racial inequalities and divisions. Drawing on the on-going discussions about racialised inequalities in the United States, Ezell suggests that this is an approach that is likely to become even more important as societies become increasingly focused on digital spaces and conversations.
The final paper we have included in this issue of the Review is by Marcel Erlinghagen and it is focused on outlining how the concept of the transnational life course can provide an important concept in the further development of migration research. Erlinghagen suggests that migration researchers need to combine insights about the life course and transnational migration in order to provide a better conceptual tool for analysing contemporary migration processes.
Alongside these four important research papers we are also pleased to be able to include a Symposium on Thomas Faist’s The Transnationalized Social Question: Migration and the Politics of Social Inequalities in the Twenty-First Century. This symposium brings together four critical commentaries on this book and a rejoinder from the author and helps to focus attention on the complex relationship between migration and social inequalities.
The final part of this issue brings together a wide range of book reviews that discuss a wide range of books that fall within the scope of the journal. Given the wider pandemic environment this has been a challenging context within which to organize book reviews and we are grateful to both publishers and our book reviewers for their efforts to ensure that we can bring books within our areas of interest to the attention of our readers.