Articulo_5_EN_Doxa_31_European_migrants

The salaries are not balanced, and the conditions are not fantastic, you don’t have the same security as in Germany. Here, in comparison with Germany, there are few labour rights, and the younger you are, or if you are very young, it’s okay, you can stay a few years, but from twenty-something or twenty-many, even, when you think about the future, it is no longer possible. (Participant no.3, man, 57 years old).

The long-term plans of German residents on the Costa del Sol are clear: 91% say that they intend to stay here for the time being, so the directors of the media and the European institutions should continue to consider them as part of the cultur-al, media and economic ecosystem of the Costa del Sol and pay more attention to them in the future.

5. Conclusions

The aims of this research have focused on the role played by foreign media for the German population on the Costa del Sol, on their process of European integration in this geographical area, and on identifying the profile of the socio-de-mographic characteristics of these audiences. This research is part of the R&D&I project Medios de comunicación y con-strucción europea: estudio sociocomunicativo de los residentes comunitarios en el sur de España y de Portugal (CSO2015-65837-R) (Mass media and the construction of Europe: a socio-communicative study of the EU residents in the south of Spain and Portugal).

The main conclusion drawn from the data collected through surveys and a focus group applied to the German population residing on the Costa del Sol is that these media are helpful and necessary in their process of integration in this geograph-ical area. However, they could be more effective in this function if they met these audiences’ demands for information and helped address the main problems that hinder their integration.

They partly fulfil the integrating role because they carry out service journalism. They provide practical information about cultural, tourist and festive events in the region, targeted at the local population but which is also of great interest to tour-ists and foreign residents looking for entertainment, how to contact local residents or their compatriots according to their interests or how to locate specific services for foreign residents. They consider this information useful and very necessary because it is the only thing they have in their language to keep up with what is happening on the Costa del Sol and because it helps them to integrate into Spanish and foreign society. However, they demand information on matters that will help them to solve their daily problems as EU residents on the Costa del Sol, as this is identified as one of the main deficiencies of the foreign media. This deficiency could be made up for by giving more coverage to events in which this audience can participate as residents (for example, in municipal elections) or by placing even more emphasis on information that has to do with guidelines and procedures for their status as European residents.

Both the retired and the professionally active German audience, from both areas of the Costa del Sol, display a great pro-European spirit and value the advantages of the European project in order to become integrated into other commu-nities, because they are experiencing them on a day-by-day basis. This is why they are highly interested in European and world issues or events. However, the foreign media do not cover this demand, which is why they resort to two other media ecosystems: the press in their country of origin and the Spanish media. However, they also highlight the fact that these two