The project of European social and cultural integration has become a controversial issue in policy agendas and academic debates: Is there a common European culture that people share across Europe? Are the different and distinct cultures and subcultures represented in emerging attempts to recognise, sustain and even advance a common European culture? Is the presence of diasporic minority cultures in particular acknowledged in the cultural politics and policies of the nation-states and the European Community.

These are key questions to address in a Europe that has become increasingly multicultural. The mobility of migrant populations, the establishment of diasporic communities and the emergence of many co-existing, competing and hybrid ethnic cultures, are all involved in the shaping of the contemporary social and cultural European condition.

More than 150 diasporic minorities have become part of European societies through a long history of migration. Nevertheless, as the phases of migration, the history of different groups and their cultural journeys through time and space vary extensively, so do their cultures and identities. Some minorities have lived in the diaspora for hundreds of years (e.g. the Jews); others have left their countries in the postcolonial era to seek employment in the former colonial powers (e.g. the Cypriots); many have been victims of violence (e.g. the Rwandan) and more recently, thousands have abandoned their homes in Eastern Europe and the former USSR to seek employment and stability in the West.

In their diversity, these minorities share some essential commonalities: they all live in European societies and they all face issues of inclusion, exclusion and participation. Have they become integrated in national and European societies? Have diasporic minorities contributed to the development of multiculturalism and of new emerging cultures or have they promoted particularity and segregation against participation in the societies in which they live? These questions address realities of everyday life, identity and culture of diasporic minorities that have attachments to distant countries of origin, to countries of residence and to transnational communities.

In this project, we aim at examining how diasporic minorities relate to local, national and transnational communities and whether community construction relates to seeking social inclusion or isolation. These two central issues we relate to the media. The possibility of diasporic minorities developing alternative and parallel media cultures to the national and European mainstream creates new possibilities for community, for participation in national and European spaces, but also for segregation and inward-looking cultures that undermine the communities with which they share their physical space.

This is a unique project in its field, and though very ambitious, we believe that it examines the importance of culture and media in particular for minorities’ cultural and social inclusion; it relates to policy, political and public debates about minorities’ belonging in European space and in member-states’ societies and highlights the role of media technologies for the changing conditions within minority media cultures and the broader media environment.

• Examine whether minority communities sustain separatist cultures or participate in an emerging European multi-ethnic culture (or diverse multi-ethnic cultures)

• Study how particular media cultures participate in creating new conditions for social inclusion and exclusion

• Analyse a particular take on media technologies’ appropriation and consequences for minorities and the broader society

• Investigate how national and EU policies about minorities and the media further or obstruct their social inclusion

• Are media important for the emergence of distinct and self-distinguishing communities in local/national/European/global context?

• What is the relation between diasporic communities and the nation-state (within which they live and the one they came from)?

• To what extent are media playing a role in maintaining cultural particularity?

• How do minorities participate/are included in the multi-ethnic, multi-national social space?

• How do the member-states and the EU allow the emergence of particular cultures and facilitate/obstruct minorities’ inclusion in the emergence of national and European contemporary cultures?

Diasporic minority populations in the EU nation-states

1. as their experience relates to issues of inclusion – exclusion
2. when they have a significant presence in the EU member-states
3. when they are actively involved in minority media production and consumption
4. Media: old – new – local – national – global – As relating to their relevance to diasporic minorities

Invitation for Collaboration

As this is an ambitious and extensive project, we depend on collaborating with academics who have been involved in the study of minorities and the media, diasporic media practitioners and activists working within diasporic communities and NGOs. We have been developing an on-line network, where researchers working on ethnic/diasporic minorities and the media and minority and NGO representatives can get in touch with us and with each other and benefit from the exchange of information, links and bibliography on-line (work in progress). Furthermore, as our research will have to depend extensively on the review of secondary sources, we want to hear about projects done in the field and about minorities’ experience of media cultures. This work will be reviewed, cited and acknowledged in our web site and in the publication of the project’s outcome.