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Round Table Discussion | Worst Case and Best Practice
220
In the appendix of my paper, at page 23, I’ve reproduced a paraphrase of what the
European Commission has defined as a working set of criteria for what constitutes
integration. What I liked about it is that it seems to very much reinforce this
notion of a two-way process in terms of “You adjust, we adapt. We adjust, you
adapt”. It seems that the news media is one of the more important sources in terms
of making migrants feel at home.
The second theme is the idea of what kind of practices are likely to discourage
migrants from feeling at home? What kind of structures, what kind of mind-sets?
Many of these have been discussed in the sessions and papers we had today.
Finally, and I suppose it’s a theme that is more specifically aimed at this afternoon
session, is this notion of what can we learn from others. What are the best practices
that we can absorb from other jurisdictions, from other places? One of the terms is:
What can we learn from North American societies, which we regard as classic
immigration societies who have had to deal with the challenges of immigration for
generations? We [as North American Societies] like to think that we finally
developed models that more or less work. Now the interesting issue is whether or
not these models have legs. In other words: They may work well in a classic
immigration society, but they may not necessarily work well in countries that
historically have been emigrant societies – or as Mark J. Miller and Stephen
Castles point out, that are regarded as complete societies. That kind of collective
mind-set could be an obstacle in terms of creating the kind of responsiveness,
accessability and the kind of equity that we normally associate as part of an
inclusive society.
So, with this warm preamble I’ll turn over to the other members of the panel or the
colloquium.
Horst Pöttker
I want to answer your questions: What can media do to make
migrants feel at home? And what are the barriers for migrants to feel
at home that are made by the media?
It was a very important finding for me that local German newspapers
before the First World War did not take any notice of the Polish
minority. So, I think the answer to the first and the second question
is: The worst case is that the mainstream media don’t take any notice
of the migrants and the minorities. I think it is a very deep reason for
migrants not to feel at home in a country, when they don't have any
access to the public discourse. And if the media don’t take any notice
of them, there is no chance to get into the public discourse. This is a
very important point. Very often we start the discussion and say: well,
Media – Migration – Integration
European and North American Perspectives
- Title
- Media – Migration – Integration
- Subtitle
- European and North American Perspectives
- Authors
- Rainer Geissler
- Horst Pöttker
- Publisher
- transcript Verlag
- Date
- 2009
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-8376-1032-1
- Size
- 15.0 x 22.4 cm
- Pages
- 250
- Keywords
- Integration, Media, Migration, Europe, North America, Sociology of Media, Sociology
- Category
- Medien