108 | nº 31, pp. 107-129 | doxa.comunicación
July-December of 2020
European migrants on the Costa del Sol: an analysis of the consumption of foreign media by the German...
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
1. Introduction
For decades, the Costa del Sol has been one of the preferred destinations for the European population to set up a new res-idence and this has given rise to an interesting media phenomenon in the area, namely, the emergence of foreign media targeted at these populations in their own language. This has led to an unusual scenario. Any group of migrants normally have access to two media ecosystems: the media of their country of origin and the media of the host country. In the case of the Costa del Sol (and other areas of Spain and Portugal), however, they also live alongside a third ecosystem, namely, the media produced exclusively for these populations in their own language, which in most cases are managed by Europeans who have been living in this area for decades.
In this particular context of European migration, population and media, our research focuses on the German residents living on the Costa del Sol1. These are the second European nationality in terms of population with 94562 residents accord-ing to data provided by the Spanish Institute of Statistics (INE) in 2016, although the number of Germans registered at the town halls (as shown below) is much lower than those who actually reside – at least for a significant part of the year – on the Costa del Sol. In the absence of any specific exhaustive censuses, the INE is also the most reliable source of data for analysing this migratory phenomenon.
1 We understand the geographical area of the Costa del Sol as the coastal region in the south of the province of Málaga, including all those municipalities along the coast with a majority of foreign residents.
Abstract:
This article analyses how the foreign-language media published on the Costa del Sol for the German population living in this region affect their process of European integration and construction. The aims are to determine the sociodemographic characteristics of this active audience, to identify their media diet and to analyse the role played by the media they consume in the integration of the German resident population into Spanish society, especially from the point of view of the process of European construction. Surveys and discussion groups make up the core methodology of this study. The main conclusion is that these media help them to an extent in their process of integration, although this role could be further expanded if the media met the information demands and the problems that hinder the residents’ integration. Furthermore, the Germans living on the Costa del Sol display a strong pro-European spirit.
Keywords:
German population; Europe; media of diaspora; foreign residents.
Resumen:
El artículo analiza el papel que desempeñan en el proceso de in-tegración y construcción europea aquellos medios en lengua ex-tranjera publicados en la Costa del Sol para la población alemana residente en esta región. Los objetivos son conocer las característi-cas sociodemográficas de esta audiencia activa, identificar su dieta mediática, analizar el papel que desempeñan los medios que com-ponen esta dieta mediática en la integración de la población de res-identes alemanes en la sociedad española, especialmente desde el punto de vista del proceso de construcción europea. La encuesta y el grupo de discusión conforman la metodología central de este es-tudio. La principal conclusión explica que estos medios les ayudan parcialmente en su proceso de integración, si bien, podría aumentar este papel si atendiese a las demandas informativas y los problemas que obstaculizan su integración. Además, los alemanes residentes en la Costa del Sol demuestran un fuerte espíritu europeísta.
Palabras clave:
Residentes alemanes; integración europea; prensa extranjera; resi-dentes extranjeros.
Received: 10/02/2020 - Accepted: 21/09/2020
Recibido: 10/02/2020 - Aceptado: 21/09/2020
