To Örebro University

The post-World War II era has seen the explicit establishment of a range of policies vis-à-vis equity and inclusion across the geopolitical spaces that constitute the global North and the global South. These have had wide ranging repercussions on the nature and quality of human life across the planet. International, national and local level policies (in democratic geopolitical spaces at least), currently constitute a foundation for equity work. Such policies and changes notwithstanding, the continuing escalation of the outcomes of disparity, the failure of institutions in their provision of equitable education, health care, and other services (even in global North settings in Scandinavia), and recent alarm reports, together call attention to the role that research plays and what research has focused and continues to focus upon vis-à-vis issues of equity and marginalization. This volume attempts to unpackage dimensions related to the type of research endeavors that have been themselves marginalized in the epistemological enterprise.

Furthermore, while it is easy to identify and be critical of the lack of coordination of institutional efforts that contribute to the marginalization of large numbers of individuals in the 21st century, I will—together with the scholars whose work is presented in this volume—make the case, that a significant step in the epistemological enterprise lies in going beyond issues of marginalization and normalization as categories deployed for the identification of children, young people or adults. The research that is show-cased in this book attempts to highlight how curtailing the categories of marginalization (and normalization) themselves are. By center-staging processes, participation patterns and membership in social practices across sites and across identity domains, the research presented in this book builds the case for an alternative way of conceptualizing the performance of marginalization (and normalization) empirically.

This book has emerged out of a series of dialogues between scholars who have visited the CCD research environment on different occasions and who have contributed to one another’s (and CCD members’) thinking in the areas of Communication, Culture and Diversity across the last two decades. More specifically, two activities on the theme of Marginalization Processes organized in 2011 and 2013, with support from the Swedish Research Council and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Marginalization Processes across Different Settings xv Örebro University, Sweden, comprised the contexts for a series of conversations that have resulted in the creation of this book. A third activity on the expanded theme of Revisiting Identity, Marginalization and Bilingualism organized in 2014, also with support from the Swedish Research Council and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Örebro University, Sweden, contributed to these dialogues. Scholars from the global North and global South—including the North in the South and the South in the North—have enrichened these dialogues from their specific domains of expertise and vantage points.

I wish to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the coordinators, the leaders and the administrators of the CCD research group during the organization of these events as well as the hosting of the international and national scholars attached to the environment across the years 2011-2015. The CCD research group has evolved into an international network-based environment that has, since 2016, moved to Jönköping University in Sweden (www.ju.se/ccd).

I would also like to thank the editorial support team at Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and, in particular, Anthony Wright and Victoria Carruthers who have provided timely and efficient guidance in navigating desk-top editorial work. Finally, I would like to extend a warm thanks to Guy Karnung—for his generosity and willingness to participate in so many aspects related to this book.