Mediatized migrants: Media cultures and communicative networking in the diaspora

Abstract

In this chapter we want to develop a diff erent perspective on media and migration. It is specifically not our intention to make any rash statements on the role of certain media in the “integration” of “ethnic minorities” into “national host societies” (see for this discussion Cottle 2000). Rather, we want to formulate some considerations on how we can capture, on the one hand, the multidimensionality of diasporic media cultures (an approach that is typical in present media ethnography) without forgetting, on the other hand, that there are typical patterns of media appropriation across migrant groups. The foundation for this is an empirical study on the media appropriation and communicative connectivity of the Moroccan, Russian and Turkish diaspora in Germany. Based on this study we have developed the concept of “mediatized migrants”. This concept argues that we must understand the present culture of migrants as media cultures, because we are now only able to comprehend them in the context of media communication. In this sense, migrants are nowadays “mediatized”; that means that their articulation of a migrant identity is deeply interwoven with and molded by diff erent forms of media. However, the diasporic media cultures of mediatized migrants remain highly differentiated, and they are marked by conflicts and contradictions. Our empirical research on the Moroccan, Russian and Turkish diaspora in Germany demonstrates that this multiplicity can be described across the diff erent migrant communities alongside a typology of origin-, ethno-and world-oriented migrants.