Page - 78 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Petra Herczeg | Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Austria 78 migration and integration was that nearly a quarter of the Austrian population makes no distinction between “refugees” and “immigrants”. People from lower social classes, persons with little formal education, and older people were especially prone to see no distinction here. Twenty percent of the Austrian population stated that they most definitely did not want to have foreigners as neighbours. The groups rated as least popular were Roma and Sinti. Citizens of former Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria but also immigrants from Russia or China were perceived to be well prepared for integration. A categorical rejection of integration and the lowest level of willingness to become integrated were attributed to “Moslem” groups, i.e., Turks, Iranians, Afghans and people from North Africa (Brettschneider 2007, 22f). Fassmann notes that especially in politics people presume that “the meaning of integration can be defined precisely (...) but ‘integration’ is only a vague concept for various analytic and normative concepts of integration and can mean many different things. Integration can mean anything from total adaptation to a loose way of incorporating social groups into a larger society” (Fassmann 2006, 225). In the debate on integration in the media and which role the media have to play in this context, the concept of media integration can be seen in three ways: “media segregation and assimilative media in- tegration (media assimilation) as the two external poles and intercultural media integration as a middle course between the two extremes” (Geißler/Pöttker 2006, 21). The dilemma involved in dealing with both semi-autonomous minorities and fully assimilated groups is evident in the diffuse use of the concepts. But in contrast to the “new” minorities, the main issue for the semi-autonomous minorities is not integration into society. The main problem is how language and culture can be preserved and passed on to future generations. The preservation of minorities’ languages involves not only individual responsibili- ty, but also a collective responsibility, and complex issues related to multi- lingualism.2 2 A personal note about my student days: When fellow students asked me about my background, I answered that I was from “Burgenland” and told them that I was Burgenland-Croatian and had been raised as a bilingual. Often enough, the response was astonishment, accompanied by compliments on how well I spoke German. I could only reply that we Croatians had been in the area for 500 years and, considering that, I was actually in pretty good shape. More seriously, though, it was obvious that my fellow students were ill-informed about Austrian ethnic groups.