Page - 24 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Horst Pöttker | Successful Integration? 24 The question remains, what media and journalism might learn from this historical counterexample in terms of a possible contribution to the process of intercultural integration. Any generalizations that could be drawn from this example would perhaps be very limited: Poland’s territorial divisions and the lack of a national government for more than a century provided fertile breeding ground for separatist and nationalist tendencies in the Polish migrant community. Under more favorable conditions, the detrimental effect on integration could have been less serious. On the other hand, this historical example also involves positive factors, such as the German citizenship of many of the migrants. At least this combination of both positive and negative factors would seem to make generalization to a certain extent justifiable. In this sense, then, the largely unsuccessful integration process of the Ruhr Poles can be instructive for the media in two ways. First, the example demonstrates that if the media ignore immigrant communities and their ethnic differences, this will not promote integration. On the other hand, it is apparent that intercultural integration is furthered if journalists take their job seriously and comprehensively report on the everyday life of ethnic minorities with accurate and authentic material. Second, it is detrimental to intercultural integration if ethnic media only perceive hostile elements in the majority culture and attempt to prevent their minority audience from communicating and interacting with the majority in positive ways. Moreover, journalists working in ethnic media can contribute to integration if they make sincere efforts to provide publicity for their audience’s concerns. For migrant audiences, this also means that the accommodating society should naturally have a place in this media constellation. 6. References Burghardt, Werner (2000): “Die polnischen Arbeiter sind...fleißig und haben einen ausgeprägten Erwerbssinn…“ – Zur Geschichte polnischer Berg- arbeiter in Recklinghausen 1884-1924. In: Bresser, Klaus/Thüer, Chris- toph, eds.: Recklinghausen im Industriezeitalter. Recklinghausen, pp. 401- 423 Durkheim, Émile (1977): Über die Teilung der sozialen Arbeit. Frankfurt a.M. Geißler, Rainer/Pöttker, Horst, eds. (2005): Massenmedien und die Integration ethnischer Minderheiten in Deutschland. Problemaufriss – Forschungs- stand – Bibliographie. Bielefeld