Page - 28 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Rainer Geißler/Sonja Weber-Menges | Media Reception and Ideas on Media Integration 28 Up to this point, an assimilative version of integration has been predominant in German research on migration. Here, integration is equated with assimilation. In his expert’s report for the independent committee on immigration established by the national government (Süßmuth-Kommission), Hartmut Esser (2001) asserts, “Social integration into the accommodating society is […] actually only possible in the form of assimilation” (emphasis in the original). For Esser, the opposite pole to integration (in the sense of assimilation) is the segregation of migrants – a simple juxtaposition of majority and minorities, a state of mutual isolation that leads to an ‘ethnic class’ (or, more precisely, an ethnic ‘lower class’). In this view, segregated and thus excluded groups are not able to participate appropriately in the social life of the core society. For this theory of integration, an integration into the social structure – i.e., equal opportunities in the educational system, on the labor market, and in access to significant institutions (e.g., access to mass media) – can only succeed if minorities become culturally assimilated. In Canada, assimilative versions of integration have belonged to the past for some time now; they are no longer applicable today. ‘Assimilation’ is a concept of the “assimilationist era” (Fleras/Elliot 1992, p. 67), which has been overcome for more than three decades. Nor do we still work with the dichotomous contradiction between assimilative integration and segregation; instead, we extend the conceptual dichotomy to a trichotomy. Alongside the concept of assimilative integration we place the concept of intercultural integration. Intercultural integration marks a middle course between assimilation and segregation. The concept of intercultural integration shares certain common features with, but also exhibits significant differences to, the concept of assimilative integration. Common to both is the normative idea of appropriate integration of migrants into the accommodating society: equal opportunities for the majority and for minorities in access to education, the labor market, and important institutions. The aim of both conceptions is to prevent the formation of “ethclasses” (Gordon 1964), to impede the ethnicization of structures promoting inequality. Nevertheless, both concepts have to do with totally different ideas of socio-cultural integration. Whereas the assimilative concept has as its goal the cognitive, social, and identity-related assimilation (= adaptation) of minorities to the majority culture, the concept of intercultural integration seeks a proper balance between the equal rights of minorities to maintain a certain cultural difference and the demands of the majority for (partial) acculturation and adaptation. Intercultural integration follows from an important fundamental principle of Canadian multiculturalism. In his classic work on multiculturalism in Canada entitled “Engaging Diversity”, Augie Fleras expresses this idea with the bipolar formula of “unity-within-diversity”, or “diversity-within-unity”