Page - 27 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

27 Rainer Geißler/Sonja Weber-Menges Media Reception and Ideas on Media Integration among Turkish, Italian and Russo-German Migrants in Germany This article is a small part, a fragment, of the work from an extensive research project on the role of the media in the integration of migrants. This project is being conducted by a team of sociologists and communications scholars at the Universities of Siegen and Dortmund. The project’s title is: Media Integration of Ethnic Minorities. With regard to both analytical and normative considerations, the fundamental concept behind our inquiry is “media integration”. After the description of this concept we will present some empirical findings on the media use of Turkish, Italian and Russo-German migrants and on the issue of which views these migrants hold with respect to certain aspects of media integration. 1. Key Concepts: Integration and Media Integration 1.1 What is Integration? Intercultural Integration: a Middle Course between Assimilation and Segregation Any attempt to systematically clarify the role of the mass media in integration will first have to concern itself with the fundamental conception of ‘integration’. What does the ‘integration’ of ‘migrants’ actually mean? Anyone doing work on this theme will quickly discover that ‘integration’ is a distinctly complex, multilayered concept subject to contradictory interpretations. At the outset, the concept of integration is of a double-sided nature: it is an analytical and systematic concept on the one hand, yet at the same time also a normative political concept. Not only is integration an instrument of scientific analysis, but the concept also always entails desirable goals, desirable developments, and a desirable final state. Thus, anyone doing academic research on integration is always – intentionally or not – in the midst of a political debate. (In this sense, for instance, concepts such as ‘integration policy’ or ‘integration spokesperson’ have become more and more widespread on the German political scene in recent years, even though for more than two decades concepts such as ‘policy on foreigners’ and ‘commissioner for foreigners’ had been used exclusively.) In light of its political implications, it is no surprise that the concept is very controversial – both in politics and in the academic disciplines (Geißler 2004).