Page - 220 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

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,