Seite - 79 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Petra Herczeg | Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Austria 79 3.3 The Current Situation of Migrants In 2005, a new law regulating the status of foreigners in Austria went into effect. Certain aspects of this new law have been a subject of heated debate: allowing for force-feeding of hunger strikers or required proof of persecution or danger for asylum seekers and mandatory participation in language courses, as demanded by the so-called new “integration agreement”. The aims of this contract are outlined on the website of the Austrian Integration Fund (http://www.integrationsfonds.at). The main goal of the Integration Agree- ment is that “migrants and asylum beneficiaries […] learn enough German to participate in the social, economic and cultural life of the host country.” Obviously, migrants must be able to communicate in the language spoken in the host country to facilitate integration. Yet, this should not require the abandonment of the mother tongue, since the knowledge and use of one’s native language are significant factors affecting the self-confidence and identity of a person. But in the Austrian public sphere, the ways of representing languages other than German are inadequate, even though Austria is a multilingual country. Often, migrants have been held responsible for the poor results attributed to the Austrian education system in the PISA report of 2003. Not only the right-wing FPÖ attempted to depict such results as an effect of “mass migration”, but also the media often focused on the problems involved in teaching migrants’ children. One major issue of this debate was whether one- year pre-school attendance should be mandatory for migrants’ children to insure better knowledge of the German language. In contrast, a view of migrants’ languages as cultural resources that can only be activated if a society is able to offer suitable conditions has, for the most part, been disregarded (Bourdieu 1983). 3.4 The Discourse on the Deportation of Asylum Seekers in 2007 To what extent the mass media can contribute to the integration of individuals is a subject of much debate. As Geißler and Pöttker have demonstrated (Geißler/Pöttker 2006), the media have a function related to social integration, insofar as they provide the public with relevant topics. According to Pöttker, one of the major responsibilities of journalism is to mediate between social segments in this complex domain. Mediating between distinct ways of life and practical knowledge creates an open-ended sphere that allows for participation in society as a whole (Pöttker 2000, 377-378).