The Journal “Transnational Social Review. A Journal for Social Work” (TSR) offers an international forum to discuss social work issues from a transnational perspective. It responds to the challenge of an increasing impact of transnational social, political, economic, and cultural processes and structures upon social work. It offers perspectives for social work theory and practice that transcend nation states. TSR is a peer-reviewed journal and will be published twice a year. It will consist of articles, book reviews and a section which includes reports on transnational social work research, practice, and curriculum development as well as transnational social policy. Its main language is English but all articles will also be published in their original language. TSR is edited by an international board of known researchers in the field of transnational social work. The first issue will be published in Spring 2011. It will focus on the topic of “The Transnational Organization of Care”.

The editors of the “Transnational Social Review” invite submissions of proposal abstracts for a special issue of the journal on epistemological, methodological, and procedural reflections in researching transnational social support and social work, to be edited by Adrienne Chambon and Stefan Köngeter. The publication is scheduled for Fall 2011.

Transnational studies have proliferated in the last twenty years. However, systematic reflections on their specific methodological and methods challenges have not been undertaken. The critique of “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) in the social sciences could be a useful starting point for such reflections. Methodological nationalism means the taken-for grantedness of nation states in most of the research in the social sciences and the conflation of society and nation. This methodological nationalism has impeded our understanding and recognition of transnational support processes. Practices that cross nation-state boundaries or the localization of persons, families, networks, and organizations in more than one national context have been overseen or even neglected by research in the social sciences and in social work. What is now needed are research strategies that overcome the shortcomings of earlier social research, methods, methodologies, epistemologies that assist researchers to reveal social practices that transcend nation-state institutions, and which can produce new transnational social contexts or fields.

In migration studies the demand for new methodological concepts is now manifest. Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller (2004) have suggested the concept of simultaneity as a methodological basis for transnational research. They claim that against the background of simultaneous processes in different national territories such an approach takes into account the multiple frames of references that affect a particular process.
In anthropology new methodological approaches and specific methods have been developed to explore transnational practices. At least since the 1990s, anthropology has been repositioning itself in the push and pull of locality and globality. The concept of multi sited ethnography by G. Marcus (1995) is oriented to the study of the movements of people and objects across social and national boundaries. Marcus proposes several variants from a research strategy of following: follow the people, follow the thing, and follow the metaphor, which he supplements by the following of stories, biographies and conflicts.
Finally, historical studies are discussing how to overcome the boundedness of historical research to the confines of nation state. Histoire croisée (Werner and Zimmermann 2006) is one of the most advanced approaches to study the interaction of social processes beyond national boundaries. Histoire croisée weaves (intersects) different perspectives, questions, levels of analysis to reveal these processes, which are typically not considered. The situated knowledge and perspective of the researcher(s) is critical in this respect, and can benefit from an exchange of perspectives. In summary, publications on the question of how to study transnational phenomena are rare (Khagram and Levitt 2008). Social work and social sciences are lacking a methodological transnationalism. However, there are many experiences with transnational research that could serve as a starting point. Therefore, a sound and systematic discussion on transnational methodology and methods across the various disciplines is now timely.

This special issue of the Transnational Social Review will focus on contributions which can promote a transnationalization of our research practice in social work and in social science.

The following questions could guide these reflections:
- How are research methods to be altered or redesigned in order to reveal transnational practices of different actors to meet the requirements of transnational research?
- How does the perspective and the location of researchers affect the research process on transnational practices? How does the location of researchers hinders a transnational perspective? How do researchers relocate or reposition themselves?
- What kind of methodological consequences can we learn from drawing upon existing research in transnational practices?

Abstracts are invited for original articles within the following topical areas:
- Transnational network analysis
- Life history and biographical research
- Research approaches to transnational social inequality and status inconsistencies
- Multi-sited ethnography
- Histoire croisée
- Transnational research teams
- Language, Translation and Transnationalism
- Cultural competencies and Transnational research
- Transnational survey research
- Virtual research approaches

Proposals falling outside of these themes will also be considered, providing the work is relevant to the overall theme of this special issue. A proposal, in the form of an abstract, should be no more than 500 words in length and should address the following: background of the proposed paper; outline of content; and main
discussion points.

We will respond to all proposals by February 21, 2011. For those proposals accepted, the deadline for submission of full articles is 30th June 2011. Articles are to be up to 5,000 words in length.