Editorial

We are delighted to present our readers with this distinctive, extended issue of the Central and Eastern European Migration Review (CEEMR), which marks the 10th anniversary of our journal. The anniversary prompts us to reflect on what we have done and what the ways forward may be. During this first decade since our journal’s creation, we have published 197 papers written by 257 authors – 65 per cent of whom were female researchers – based in 33 countries (the top five being Poland, the UK, Norway, Romania and the Netherlands) and assessed by 262 reviewers, supported by 26 journal editors and 25 members of the advisory board – to all of whom we owe an enormous debt of gratitude.

The significance of our authors’ contributions and the journal quality were recognised in numerous international databases, including the ESCI Web of Science Core Collection (from 2020), Scopus and EBSCO (2021). Published in July this year, our first Impact Factor of the Web of Science database – 1.7 – shows the CEEMR’s importance and influence, which has been confirmed by the citation index CiteScore in Scopus 2.1, placing us in the second quartile of the best journals in the disciplines of ‘Social Sciences’, ‘Demography’ and ‘Sociology and Political Sciences’ and meaning that we are in the group of 30+ per cent of the best outlets in this database.

The mission of the CEEMR, inspired by Prof. Marek Okolski, at that time Head of the Centre of Migration Research at the University of Warsaw and its first editor-in-chief, Prof. Agata Gorny, remains to encourage and enable an academic discussion on texts and research related to migration into and within Central and Eastern Europe and to promote studies concerning this region and migrants from CEE. Our ambition is not only to show the specificity of migration processes concerning CEE but also to bring wider theoretical and methodological contributions to migration studies and to participate in current debates.

The distinctive combination of features – such as originality, significance, high quality and rigour, interdisciplinarity, diversity, openness and inclusiveness – builds our identity. Operating on the principle of the Diamond Open Access (with no fees for publication for authors and entirely free access for all readers), the CEEMR provides a platform for exchange and discussion between researchers from different backgrounds and parts of the world (inter alia, supporting young scholars and authors from less-internationalised environments), gives inclusive access to publishing opportunities for researchers and free knowledge for readers (including those from outside academia). Our publication model is possible thanks to the stable core funding secured by the publishers – the Centre of Migration Research, the University of Warsaw, and the Polish Academy of Science. This is supplemented by internal and external grants for development as well as the fantastic work of a dedicated team of people editing, producing and promoting the journal (to mention only two of them pivotal for these processes, Renata Stefanska – CEEMR managing editor – and Jenny Money, our editing mentor and proofreader). We believe it is crucial to enable inclusiveness and open science and to stimulate broad knowledge generating and sharing to fulfil the university’s civic mission.

With migration scholars’ focus of attention moving to CEE countries due to the war in Ukraine, increasing migration and integration pressures and the growing presence of migration topics in public and political discourses in this region, our journal provides timely and specialist knowledge. It gives local researchers and individuals with lived experiences a voice with which to share their perspectives and insights within and beyond CEE. Despite the occasional additional effort and resources needed to produce a high-quality output, we are committed to providing authors with visible original, significant and high-standard research findings with our publishing forum and support throughout the manuscript revising and publishing process.  

Due to political, social, cultural and conceptual changes and our aim to give a broader platform for knowledge exchange and discussion, we believe that the CEEMR’s geographical scope needs to be seen beyond the narrow post-communist lens. We draw on historical, geographical, social and cultural links and common elements leading to the understandings of Central Europe, which include countries such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and even Slovenia or Croatia. Moving beyond the binary division of Western vs post-communist Europe allows new perspectives and narratives to be articulated and helps to challenge and change power relations in migration studies – thus contributing to the decolonisation of knowledge.

This extended volume of the CEEMR contains two important special sections. One section is intended to provide new approaches to integration and discuss this increasingly debated concept, while the other constitutes the first part of the collection of papers submitted for our call on the migration implications and consequences of the war in Ukraine. These special sections are followed by three individual articles on distrust and hope among Georgian migrant women in Greece, on foreign residents’ perceptions of public services in Poland and on the experiences of Polish professionals in Silicon Valley in the USA. The issue closes with an article on population ageing during migration transition, published in our special series ‘Migration Processes and Policies in Central and Eastern European Countries’.

Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska
Editor in Chief