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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now; they are no longer applicable today.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”
Media – Migration – Integration
European and North American Perspectives
- Titel
- Media – Migration – Integration
- Untertitel
- European and North American Perspectives
- Autoren
- Rainer Geissler
- Horst Pöttker
- Verlag
- transcript Verlag
- Datum
- 2009
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-8376-1032-1
- Abmessungen
- 15.0 x 22.4 cm
- Seiten
- 250
- Schlagwörter
- Integration, Media, Migration, Europe, North America, Sociology of Media, Sociology
- Kategorie
- Medien