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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
ISSN: 1369-183X (Print) 1469-9451 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjms20
Diasporic Media Across Europe: Multicultural
Societies and the Universalism–Particularism
Continuum
Myria Georgiou
To cite this article: Myria Georgiou (2005) Diasporic Media Across Europe: Multicultural Societies
and the Universalism–Particularism Continuum, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31:3,
481-498, DOI: 10.1080/13691830500058794
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691830500058794
Published online: 15 Aug 2006.
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Diasporic Media Across Europe:
Multicultural Societies and the
UniversalismÁ/Particularism Continuum
Myria Georgiou
Europe is a cultural space of meeting, mixing and clashing; a space of sharing (and not
sharing) economic, cultural and symbolic resources. Dominant ideologies of Europeanism
project an image of Europe as a common and distinct cultural Home, a Home that
excludes and (re-)creates Otherness when it does not fit a model of universalism and
appears as competing particularism. Cultural diversity has always characterised Europe,
but growing potentials for mobility and communication have led to the emergence and
intensification of diverse cultural experiences and formations. In this context, the growing
numbers and kinds of diasporic media have significant implications for imagining
multicultural Europe and for participating (or not) in European societies and
transnational communities. What is argued here is that diasporic media cultures do
not emerge as projects that oppose the universalistic projects of Europe and of global
communication, but that they gain from ideologies of globalisation and democratic
participation as much as they gain and depend on ideologies of identity and
particularism. Drawing from a cross-European mapping and three specific case studies,
I try to explain why diasporic media cultures challenge both the limits of European
universalism and of diasporic particularism.
Keywords: Diaspora; Transnational Communications; UniversalismÁ/Particularism;
Multiculturalism
Introduction
The rows of satellite dishes in multiethnic neighbourhoods have become the ultimate
symbol of ethnic segregation in the eyes of some local authorities; inflammatory
Myria Georgiou is Lecturer in International Communications at the Institute of Communications Studies,
University of Leeds. Correspondence to: Dr Myria Georgiou, Institute of Communications Studies, University of
Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. E-mail: m.georgiou@leeds.ac.uk
ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/05/030481-18 # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/13691830500058794
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Vol. 31, No. 3, May 2005, pp. 481Á/498
comments posted on religious websites are flagged as proof of fundamentalism’s
expansion in Europe; and local Internet cafe´s are targeted for attracting too many
young men who use technology and public space for all the wrong reasons.
Arguments such as these, which revolve around the potential threats of diasporic and
migrant media cultures for European democracy and values, are becoming
increasingly common in popular media and mainstream political discourses. The
fast-growing number of minority media projects and diverse technology appropriations,
combined with the visibility of difference they entail (e.g. satellite dishes,
different television programmes, Internet cafe´s, various language broadcasts), bring
mediation into the heart of debates on inclusion, integration and democracy in
Europe. Studying diasporic media cultures in their complexity, beyond the cultural
singularities and moral panics, can help us understand what is different and what is
common in the European cultural space, what is shared and what is not between
minorities and majorities. Such debates invite us to think how media cultures might
bring together, represent and include difference and how they might exclude it and
lead to conflicts between different groups.
Diasporic media that expand across and beyond Europe, connecting and also
acting autonomously in local, national and transnational cultural spaces and
populations, become a key area for thinking of recognition of particularity on the
one hand, and of respect for universalistic values of democracy and communication
across Europe on the other. Universalism and particularism become central analytical
concepts for understanding diasporic media cultures beyond binaries and oppositions
(e.g. ethnic segregation vis-a`-vis integration; national vis-a`-vis transnational,
minority vis-a`-vis majority) and in their actual expressions and implications for
multicultural Europe.
What this paper will try to do is to address the continuities and interdependencies
between diasporic, national and local cultures, minority and majority media, and
projects of local, national and transnational participation. As will be argued, the
reproduction of interpretative binaries neither contributes to understanding the
complexities of communication processes, nor helps in interpreting the actual
cultural (mediated) experience within multicultural societies. The dialectic interconnection
between universalism and particularism*/as conceptualised in the works
of Robertson (1992) and Balibar and Wallerstein (1991)*/as well as Hall’s
articulation of diffe´rance (2001) and Silverstone’s discussion on contrapuntal cultures
(2003), are useful and influential starting points for my analysis. Empirically, this
paper draws from an EC-funded research project mapping the diverse diasporic
media cultures across Europe.1
Diasporic media cultures develop in the intersection of local, national and
transnational spaces. Diasporic media are of various sizes, levels of professionalism,
success and lifespan; they employ different technologies and have different
entrepreneurial, cultural and political goals. What they all have in common is that
they address particular ethnic, linguistic and/or religious groups that live within
broader and diverse multicultural societies. Their audiences are based within
482 M. Georgiou
localities and nation-states. They are minorities in these nation-states, but they all
have some connection (imagined or real) and share a sense of belonging within a
larger community spreading beyond national boundaries (the diasporic element). It
is very important to realise that diasporic media address those audiences both in their
particularity, and also in the universality of their (imaginary) cultural existence (e.g.
Somalis in London share a commonality with Somalis in France; Palestinians in Paris
have some common interests and tastes that relate to their ethnicity). These
commonalities are not necessarily real but, even if imagined, they can have real
consequences. Sharing common cultural repertoires and information, as these appear
on satellite Greek television shown across Europe for example, can lead to the
(re)invention of shared identity and community; this is a case of sharing particularity
in global scale. Such projects of particularism, though, are neither closed nor
competitive with universalistic values of democracy and communication. Actually,
and inevitably, they depend on the universalismÁ/particularism continuum. Even
when their content promotes insularity and closure, they still depend for their
existence on universalistic values ingrained in the modern nation-state (that supports
them with money and infrastructure), on universal human rights and the freedom of
communication (that protects their rights to exist). This is a key contradiction that
has implications both for diasporic media as projects of community and identity and
for the national and European policies which aim to integrate and smooth difference
within European mediascapes. This contradiction will be illustrated in the case
studies that follow.
There are many ambiguities involved in the development and success of diasporic
media; but the ambiguous character of such projects and their implications is what
makes the universalismÁ/particularism debate relevant as an interpretative framework.
Later in this paper, three case studies, each originating in one of the three spaces where
this research took place and which emerge as the significant (interconnected)
contextual locations for diasporic media cultures, will illustrate the proposed
articulation of the universalismÁ/particularism continuum. The local, the national
and the transnational form the spatial context where diasporic groups live and imagine
their diasporic space to expand. They are the locations where the diasporic media
cultures are shaped in the production of various media and in the consumption and
appropriation of different media and technologies. The three case studies are:
. transnational: the other satellite television*/the example of Al Jazeera;
. national: constructing multiple communities in mediated spaces*/the example of
the website New Vision; and
. local: interpreting the mainstream*/the example of London Greek Radio.
Defining Universalism and Particularism: Beyond the Binary
Balibar and Wallerstein (1991) and Robertson (1992) have challenged the binaries
and antinomies that much of the globalisation literature has depended on: the global
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 483
and the local; the national and the transnational; and, most importantly, universalism
and particularism. Within such binary analyses of globalisation, diasporic media have
traditionally fallen into the particularistic category and are seen as representing
ideologies of identity, community, belonging and difference. Yet, such binaries are
problematic as they undermine the grey areas, the ways centrifugal and centripetal
relations of power are formed within and in the meeting of the particular and the
universal (Appadurai 1990; Robertson 1992); they obscure the actual interdependence
of the majority and minority and of the global and the local for the
construction of their meanings (Miller 1995; Urry 2000).
Roland Robertson’s analysis of globalisation involves ‘the attempt to preserve direct
attention both to particularity and difference and to universality and homogeneity. It
rests largely on the thesis that we are, in the late twentieth century, witnesses to*/and
participants in*/a massive twofold process involving the interpenetration of the
universalization of particularism and the particularization of universalism. . .’ (1992:
100). This process has to do, on the one hand, with the human condition in general,
and on the other, with the specific formation and intensification of this
interpenetration within recent history:
Rather than simply viewing the theme of universalism as having to do with
principles which can and should be applied to all, and that of particularism as
referring to that which can and should be applied only ‘locally’, I suggest that the
two have become tied together as part of a globewide nexus. They have become
united in terms of the universality of the experience and, increasingly, the
expectation of particularity, on the one hand, and the experience and, increasingly,
the expectation of universality, on the other. The latter*/the particularization of
universalism*/involves the idea of the universal being given global-human
concreteness; while the former*/the universalization of particularism*/involves
the extensive diffusion of the idea that there is virtually no limit to particularity, to
uniqueness, to difference and to otherness (Robertson 1992: 102).
This analysis highlights much of the ideological basis of the universalismÁ/
particularism continuum within globalisation. The diffusion of such ideologies
allows space for projects such as diasporic media, which are global in their reach but
particular in their cultural role. In their vast majority, such projects celebrate
particularism within universalism and rely on the assumption that they can function
as particular, different and unique projects, because the present condition (of
universalism) allows space for all different and unique projects to emerge and
develop. For example, the London Greek Radio can exist in its uniqueness because the
ideological, political and technological context also allows the London Turkish Radio,
Kiss FM and Sunrise Radio to exist. Diasporic media cultures are expressions of the
universalisation of particularism as they are expected to form part of the diverse and
multicultural media settings. They are expressions of the particularisation of
universalism because media are considered and experienced as universal cultural
products, references and communication tools. Diasporic communities expect and
seek to enjoy media, not only for their particular content and meanings but also as
484 M. Georgiou
they are universal and globally-shared technologies, means of communication and
cultural references integrated in everyday life.
Universalism and particularism, in their co-existence and interdependence, become
tools within an interpretative framework of understanding the construction and
meanings of diverse mediascapes in multicultural societies and across transnational
spaces. Thinking of cultural difference and ideologies of particularism as interwoven
in universalistic ideologies can help us understand cultural tensions and conflicts as
the inevitable struggles that take place in the process of surpassing exclusive and
Orientalist universalisms and exclusive and insular particularisms. This is an
invitation to break off the romanticism and the pathologisation of particularism
on the one hand, and the fear and demonisation of universalism as the ideology of
domination on the other.
There are different areas in which the universalismÁ/particularism continuum
becomes relevant to diasporic media cultures. Most of them are emic and relate to
diasporic politics and media practice. While outlining below what I understand to be
some of those emic articulations under three headings (ideological, functional and
experiential), it is a fourth one, an etic one*/the analytical articulation*/which I
intend to develop further in this article.
. The ideological articulation: As a rule, media rely on ideologies of universalism*/
freedom of communication, democracy, media autonomy*/but minority media
translate the ideological basis of universalism from a particularistic viewpoint.
This means that they adopt ideologies of democracy, human rights and freedom of
communication in promoting their role as representatives of minority and/or
marginalised groups and as agents of diversity and multiculturalism. They
promote this role for both minority audiences and the broader society.
. The functionalist articulation: This relates to the ideological articulation, but it is
primarily related to the actual tactics adopted by minority media in their attempt
to develop and function as institutions, especially in the local and national
contexts. Minority media promote themselves as agents of particularism and as
alternative sources to the mainstream information and cultural products. Yet, most
of them depend on the universalistic project of nation-states, where they are based,
for gaining recognition and support. Nation-states and local authorities recognise
and support such projects, not in the name of particularism, but in the name of an
inclusive, democratic but singular society (i.e. the universalistic values of the
modern nation-state).
. The experiential articulation: Most minority media rely on diverse sources, forms
of production and agendas for their outputs. This relates to the nature of their
audiences*/embedded in specific national and local spaces, but also being
connected with networks across space. Minority audiences seek information
from the country of origin, the broader diasporic space, and from the national and
local contexts where they are embedded. Media output becomes a combination of
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 485
repertoires reflecting the universalistic and particularistic interests of their global
audiences.
. The analytical articulation: There is a growing recognition of the urgency of rearticulating
and re-conceptualising binary oppositions (i.e. the local versus the
global; the national versus the transnational; the universal versus the particular)
within the present understanding of globalisation. The analysis of minority media
development and expansion across spatial contexts allows us to think of the
continuities in the global condition and for the implications of the universalismÁ/
particularism continuum for multicultural societies. This last kind of articulation
is at the core of this paper and the discussion on diasporic media cultures’
implications for multicultural Europe.
Universalism and Particularism in the European Context
European identity is becoming increasingly identified with a capacity to tolerate
considerable cultural diversity*/at least of those values that European citizens
consider to be most worth preserving (Reif 1993).
The debate around the cultural richness of Europe is not new; in the European Union
the differences between ethnic communities have been projected as an advantage of
the continent’s pluralism (Gatling 1989). Yet, this discourse of celebrating diversity
has not always been significantly and meaningfully inclusive. As Gatling argues, in the
EU there is a discussion on diversity within unity, but such unity can have racist
overtones. This is often expressed in the idea of Europeanism, based on the values of
Western democracy. This combination often embraces the dominant status quo and
relations of power, which cannot but reproduce exclusions.
What many of the dominant ideologies in Europe undermine is the heterogeneity
characteristic of all multicultural societies. Heterogeneity causes a tension in the
whole of society, not because it is a negative condition in itself but because it is being
pathologised as a condition. Hobsbawm and Ranger (1992) emphasise the role of
invented tradition for sustaining this tension: ‘the invention of tradition is an integral
task in the nation-state’s reproduction of its continuity. There is then an inherent
tension between the invented ‘‘heritage’’ which roots national identity in history, and
the change and heterogeneity that characterises the contemporary western Europe
nation-state’ (quoted in Husband 1994: 6Á/7). The invented ‘heritage’ and the myth
of inherited culture characterising the ideology of the nation-state have greatly
influenced the way Europe and the European project of (exclusive and exclusionary)
universalism have been imagined. In similar ways, Pieterse (1991) argues that there is
a myth about European culture as characterised by the inherited civilisation based on
Judaeo-Christian religion, Greek ideas of government, philosophy, art and science
and Roman views concerning law. Pieterse challenges this: ‘The problem is that, in
addition to being chauvinistic, elitist, pernicious and alienating, it is wrong. This
myth undermines regional cultures and subcultures; it represents elite culture as tout
486 M. Georgiou
court, it denies popular culture, it defines culture in relation to the past and it ignores
Europe’s multicultural realities’ (Pieterse 1991: 3).
A crucial question is how Europe is or can be lived. The dominant ideologies of
Europeanism (Amin 1989; Morley and Robins 1995) and of universalistic values of
democracy and progress project an image of Europe as a common and distinct
cultural Home, which excludes and (re-)creates Otherness when it does not fit within
this model of universalism and appears as competing particularism. But the
construction of Europe as singular is as much exclusive as it is unreal; Europe is
not a Home, but several common homes (Balibar 1991); it is a space of co-existing and
competing cultures, of exclusions and struggles, of multiple cultural formations
expanding from the local to the national and the transnational.
The population of peoples who at some stage in their history migrated from an
original homeland and settled in a EU country is estimated at around 8 per cent of the
European Union’s population.2
One seventh of all manual workers in Germany and
the UK came as immigrants, and in France, Belgium and Switzerland a quarter of the
industrial workforce is formed by immigrants. Next to that, millions of people
belonging to the older diasporas*/Jews, Roma, Armenians*/have been integral
components of the European past and present, even if their experience of Europe has
sometimes been of pain and prosecution. More recently, hundreds of thousands of
refugees have been settling in the EU and though these are small numbers compared
to the world refugee population, refugee mobility is central in debates for the future
of Europe. Framing this discussion in a global context, we have to take into
consideration that only 3 per cent of the world’s refugees reach the UK and that in
some EU countries the migrant population does not actually exceed 2 per cent of the
population (Council of Europe 1993). Thus, the interest in migrant and diasporic
populations is not a mere reflection of numbers.
Challenging the Reproduction of Binaries
The growing human diversity in Europe during the twentieth century led to rich and
tense political, policy and academic debates. Universalist ideologies became in many
ways an integral part of the new European universalism, which is more aware of
diversity and global change. Yet European multiculturalism, as a rule, is based on the
recognition of difference through cultural compartmentalisation (Hall 2001). It has
rarely recognised or addressed the continuities and the co-existence of different
cultures as integral parts of what is called European culture as a whole*/this denied
continuity is what Hall has addressed in his conceptualisation of diffe´rance. ‘The
important thing about the concept of diffe´rance is that this is not a binary, either/or
form of difference between what is absolutely the same and what is absolutely
other or different, but is ‘‘a weave of similarities and differences which refuse to
separate into fixed binary oppositions’’’ (Hall 2001: 11). Inviting a similar understanding,
Silverstone (2003) emphasises the dialectic between the minority and the
majority*/and, I would add, the dialectic between the universalistic and the
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 487
particularistic*/and the different components of cultures. Drawing from music, he
develops a metaphor around the contrapuntal or the counterpoint: ‘The important
thing . . . about counterpoint, is that every theme requires another in order to be
meaningful’ (2003: 13). He adds:
. . . we can only grasp the meaning of a particular minority media initiative, and
assess its significance, in its contrapuntal relationship to the presence of other
media and media texts which it addresses, contradicts or seeks to bypass. Likewise
we can only grasp the meaning of dominant mainstream media insofar as we
register their contrapuntal relationship to the experiences, voices and practices of
both the included and excluded (but still present) minorities. These draw on and in
sounds, images and values from outside the boundaries of the mainstream and the
national. In so doing, of course, they draw on other mainstreams. And in so doing
they also challenge the integrity of the claimed boundaries around European
culture and add a further contrapuntal layer to it, through their relationships to
transnational media (Silverstone 2003: 18).
Dominant ideologies of Europeanism and top-down politics of multiculturalism
usually fail to recognise this dialectic and the unstable, creative and tense condition
of multicultural societies (Husband 1994; Kymlicka 1995). This kind of multiculturalism
has not been more inclusive than older (or newer) forms of exclusionary
or assimilationist ideologies; within it, culture and cultural difference function
like nature, locking people and groups a priori into genealogy, into a determination
(Balibar 1991). Culture and identity can reproduce one-dimensional and stereotyping
identifications of those minorities that are excluded; dominant discourses of
multiculturalism lock them into exclusionary cultural categories as much as
they did around race in the past. Thin multiculturalism */as Modood and Berthoud
(1997) call it*/positions groups of people in self-contained, closed and unchanged
ethnic categories but fails to recognise diffe´rance and the change and clashes
that involve minorities and majorities in different schemes and relations. It is
this kind of continuity and co-dependence of minority and majority cultures,
of multicultural formations and diasporic media cultures, that the universalismÁ/
particularism continuum helps us understand. The particularistic cannot be
understood but in its dialogue and co-dependence from the universal and the
other way around. This is what helps us understand the competing multicultural
tendencies within Europe*/the top-down compartmentalising ones, and the
bottom-up, which inevitably and in their actual practices, depend on that
dialectic.
The ever-changing cultural map of Europe, reflected in the diversity of media and
the different appropriations of communication technologies (e.g. commercial and
community media, Internet cafe´s), in new musical genres that different groups claim
to be their own but which only exist as products of particularistic themes and
universalistic forms (e.g. Garage music, Bhangra), and in the sharing of airwaves and
bits (e.g. multicultural radio, digital television), invite us to think of continuities
rather than of closures and exclusivities. As the examples to be discussed here will
488 M. Georgiou
indicate, there is a growing co-existence of universalistic and particularistic cultural
claims, aims and outputs, and this continuity, though full of tensions and
contradictions, unsettles the perceived boundaries and boundedness of the European
(cultural) whole.
Beyond the ‘Immigration Problem’
The ideological closure of the dominant European universalism comes with the
ascription of a closed particularism, which opposes and threatens universalism. The
verbal recognition of minorities and the ethnicisation of societies around concepts
such as the immigrant, the migrant and the ethnic minority reflect and reproduce a
political compartmentalisation of Europe and ideologies of exclusion based on
cultural difference. The word immigrant, especially, is ‘a catch-all category,
combining ethnic and class criteria, into which foreigners are dumped indiscriminately,
though not all foreigners and not only foreigners’ (Balibar 1991: 221). The
immigrant becomes a chief characteristic that replaces race in a racist typology; it is a
form of ‘racism without races’, a verbal construction of opposition between Europe
and the Other. The words immigrant and migrant are becoming increasingly
inseparable from phrases such as ‘immigration problem’ and ‘immigration crisis’.
Such discourses that pathologise migration and minorities appear in official language
and often force academic and counter-political discourses to adopt a defensive,
oppositional stand that also pathologises or victimises minorities. Such discourses
not only deny individuals and groups their journey in time and space, but they also
undermine the history of settlement, of inclusion and exclusion in specific locales and
nation-states.
Against the catch-all category of the immigrant, I draw from approaches within
transnationalism and contemporary theorisations of diaspora. Transnationalism
refers to the development of dense networks across borders (Portes 1997) and to
the processes by which migrant and diasporic communities forge and sustain multistranded
social relations across geographical, cultural and political borders (Basch
et al. 1994). Contemporary theorisations of diaspora become useful in thinking
of continuity (the changing same; Gilroy 1995), community and attachment
in transnational spaces (see, among others, Brah 1996; Clifford 1994; Gillespie
1995; Gilroy 1997; Hall 1990). While diaspora is a contested concept*/having
at times implied ethnic homogeneity and essentialised identity*/recent debates
around globalisation, transnationalism and mediation have re-formulated the
concept of diaspora to recognise heterogeneity and diversity, transformation and
difference. Gillespie highlights the shift in diasporic experience through globalisation:
‘A diasporic perspective acknowledges the ways in which identities have been and
continue to be transformed through relocation, cross-cultural exchange and
interaction. The globalisation of cultures is deeply implicated in this process’
(1995: 7). Mobility of populations and individuals and their changing cultural
geography, reflected both in flows and in language*/in adjectives rather than
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 489
nouns (diasporic instead of diaspora; migratory instead of the migrant)*/challenge
such closures of cultural compartmentalisation.
The Diasporic (Mediated) Space
Both place and space are important elements for understanding diaspora, diasporic
dislocation (Dayan 1999), relocation and the processes of deteritorialisation and
reterritorialisation that characterise the real and the imagined diasporic experience.
Diasporic minorities live within specific locales, national and transnational spaces.
Social relations and communication within and beyond diasporic communities
take place in spaces. Some of those spaces (also defined as ethnoscapes and
mediascapes by Appadurai 1990, 1996) are grounded in very specific places*/such as
the neighbourhood*/while others exist virtually, in ‘non-places’ (Urry 2000). Social
interaction is no longer dependent on simultaneous spatial co-presence; there are
also relations developing with the ‘absent other’ through new communications.
When this happens, experience of time and space becomes distanciated (Giddens
1990) and diasporic communities can break out of the specificities of space and
extend their communication potentials. In this context, there is less and less a
possibility for a neat equation between culture, community and geography (Gillespie
1995) and more space for ‘imaginative geography and history’ (Said 1985). The
connections and relations of ‘absence’ between places are greatly strengthened by
modern communication systems, which have augmented a sense of diasporic
awareness.
Diasporic communities sustain and partly depend for their shared sense of identity
on transnational communications. But the national and local context where diasporic
populations live is equally important for the construction of meanings of community
and identity, especially as inclusion, exclusion and participation in the broader
society are largely grounded in national and local space. Needless to say, this leads
to certain limitations in an analysis*/such as the one which follows*/which aims
at drawing out themes and characteristics that go beyond the specific. At the same
time, an awareness of spatial dialectics informs my analysis and its construction of
themes.
Diasporic Media Cultures: Spatial, Cultural and Ideological Continuums
The afore-mentioned European research project produced both a comprehensive
map of diasporic media cultures and a set of themes which address the meanings and
implications of these cultures for multicultural Europe. Here, one theme from each of
the three spaces which form the context of diasporic media cultures*/the local, the
national and the transnational*/are discussed in order to illustrate their role in
shaping the politics of difference and particularity.
490 M. Georgiou
Transnational: The Other Satellite Television—The Example of Al Jazeera
Satellite television is homologous to the transnationalism of diasporic experience.
Satellite television has radically altered transnational mediascapes as it has
encouraged simultaneity and richness in the circulation of images and texts
consumed by diasporic populations across the globe. With satellite technology,
television produced in the homeland has become available across the globe. Dispersed
audiences watch the same news and the same comedies, they know what the weather
is like and what kind of music is popular in their country of origin. At the same time,
new satellite television channels, which are not rooted in any one homeland but
which become significant for identity and community as they specifically address
transnational audiences, become important players in global communications. The
connectedness, simultaneity and sharing of common images and narratives across
boundaries remind dispersed populations of the existence of a transnational
community which is*/potentially*/inclusive of all the groups around the globe.
On the one hand, satellite television reflects the diasporic project of sustaining
cultural particularity. On the other, diasporic satellite television has managed to
develop the promotion of technological innovation and the liberalisation of
telecommunications. The relation between the mainstream/universalising and the
particular/minority is reciprocal here*/diasporic satellite culture is not just
mimicking the mainstream and globalising appropriations of satellite technology, it
is also actively (even if sometimes invisibly) shaping European and transnational
satellite cultures.
In many European countries, diasporic communities have introduced and/or
increased the popularity of satellite television. The density of satellite dishes and cable
television subscription is higher in migrant households compared to indigenous ones,
as Bo¨se et al. (2002) note for Austria. Similar findings appear in other countries with
large migrant communities. According to the mapping of satellite diasporic channels,
there are at least 200 diasporic satellite channels available across the European Union
and the numbers are fast increasing. Turkish satellite channels are the most numerous
and diverse; they include dozens of channels produced in Turkey and abroad, some of
them state-controlled and others commercial. Other channels with a rapid increase in
numbers are those originating in the former Soviet Union countries. Most of these
are commercial enterprises addressing the new migrant communities originating in
these countries and now being spread across the EU. A third group worth mentioning
is the Arabic channels, increasingly recognised as key players in global communications
by Western governments and other major media commentators.
Access to diasporic satellite television within Europe is becoming an arena of
political action with unpredictable consequences. Local authorities in a growing
number of EU countries (e.g. Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands) have introduced
restrictions on the installation of satellite dishes which allow the reception of
diasporic channels. Such restrictions are problematic in many ways, especially as they
reinforce a sense of Otherness among minorities and reproduce oppositional
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 491
ideologies between diasporic (particularistic) and national (universalistic) cultural
projects. Yet, as the popularity of satellite television among diasporic populations is
growing, this opposition is challenged. As empirical research has shown, minority
populations not only consume diasporic media, they also consume mainstream
media. More than competing, their diverse media consumption is complex and
engages diasporic populations with a variety of texts and cultural products, which
they consume ever more critically (Aksoy and Robins 2000; Georgiou 2001; Gillespie
1995). The engagement of diasporic audiences with satellite television reflects the
ways mainstream and minority media interweave and how it is more about
continuity between the particular and the universal than about competition.
The example of Al Jazeera reflects this continuum, even if it has been used in some
political debates to illustrate the opposition between universalism and particularism.
Al Jazeera, an Arabic satellite television station extensively consumed by transnational
Arabic audiences but unknown until recently in the West, has entered mainstream
mediascapes and everyday political discourse as a powerful player in the last few
years. After 9/11, Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, broadcast a series of
monologues by Bin Laden and exclusive reports from Afghanistan when no other
medium had access in the country. Overnight, Al Jazeera became one of the most
broadly quoted media, visibly altering the balance in global communication settings.
The US Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded of the Emir of Qatar that the
station stop the broadcasts of the Bin Laden videos, while the station’s Brussels-based
European editor, Ahmad Kamel, found himself detained and deported by the Swiss
authorities on 14 October 2002.
The power of Al Jazeera, bringing it to the centre of global publicity, is directly
connected to its ability to cross boundaries and overcome the broadcasting
restrictions of nation-states. Al Jazeera’s content and access to its sources are difficult
to control, though such attempts have not only been expressed by the US, but also in
the Arab world. However, Al Jazeera’s popularity is increasing fast: it now has 50
million viewers around the world. This is a station that addresses an Arabic
transnational community. This large audience turns to Al Jazeera for two main
reasons (El Nawawy and Iskandar 2002). On the one hand, it is a station that
proposes an alternative to the mainstream Western media agenda, which has
alienated many of the Arabic populations living in the West. On the other hand,
Arabic audiences turn to Al Jazeera more often than they turn to Arabic official and
state-controlled media, as Al Jazeera challenges the restrictions and censorship
imposed by most Arabic governments. The position of this station’s audiences cannot
but be understood as a dialectic and critical interweaving of the universal and
the particular. From their position in the West, Al Jazeera’s audiences become critical
of the restrictions imposed on free communication by some Arabic countries. At
the same time, this station’s audiences turn to Al Jazeera for receiving what they
perceive as information and entertainment that is of particular interest to Arabic
audiences.
492 M. Georgiou
National: Constructing Multiple Communities in Mediated Spaces*/The Example of
New Vision
Challenging the binaries between minorities and majorities or between universalism
and particularism is not only a matter of interpretation of the relation between
different media; many specific projects become by themselves spaces for the
expression of such continuities, dialogue and negotiation. The case of New Vision
(www.newvision.org.uk), an Ethiopian initiative on the web, is very characteristic as a
challenge to singular boundaries and to the separation of media between mainstream
and minority.
New Vision */The Independent Refugee News and Information Service */addresses
primarily the refugee community in the UK, but also the Ethiopian diaspora and a
community of refugee rights activists in Britain and beyond. The website campaigns
for refugee rights and includes up-to-date information about events and activities in
this area. At the same time, it has a space especially devoted to news and information
regarding the Ethiopian diaspora, and a broader social space, with news on refugee
everyday life, job advertising and updates on asylum-seeker politics and policies.
Positive representation of refugees, which challenges their representation as a
problem, is the declared mission of New Vision. This agenda becomes prominent,
for example, in an article about the contribution of migrants employed as nurses and
doctors to British society and in frequent reports on refugee artists. New Vision
constantly reminds its audiences*/refugees, migrants and members of the support
community*/of the possibilities for an inclusive, diverse society and of a mediated
space which is not exclusionary and exclusive, but which can actually fit and include
issues of identity and community. At the same time, it can present and promote
agendas that relate to the universalistic project of the (multiethnic) state. New Vision
calls itself ‘The Voice for the Voiceless’ and it defines its mission as a contribution to
harmonious integration in multicultural Britain, while at the same time it claims to
be one of the most popular media spaces for the Ethiopian diaspora.
There are several dimensions of New Vision that are interesting and important in
the context of the present discussion. Firstly, New Vision is a case that illustrates the
development of a new form of community space. On the one hand, this is a space for
the multiethnic refugee community (and its supporters) and for campaigns that
relate to democratic participation and inclusion in the nation-state. On the other
hand, it is a diasporic project for the Ethiopian community. In New Vision, the
boundaries between the ethnic and the multiethnic are both blurred and negotiated.
The potential for the co-existence of multiple flows of communication within an
alternative mediated space reflects the possibility for developing a more inclusive and
dialectical form of multiculturalism. This example also indicates very clearly how the
Internet, more than any other medium, can become the space where new migrant
communities lacking numbers, resources and know-how can develop alternative
mediated spaces. For transnational communities, such as the Ethiopian, the
immediacy and access to community information and communication on the
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 493
Internet reflect the visibility that a community needs for surviving*/in its
connectivity and its imagining. Furthermore, this case indicates how a website can
become an active political forum and a point of reference for minorities and activists
when their agenda is excluded from mainstream discourses. New Vision is not only a
site of political campaigning; it is also a social*/even if virtual*/forum and a space
of positive refugee/Ethiopian representation. Sites such as this highlight aspects of
multiethnic societies which are overlooked and undermined in mainstream media
and public discourses. Examples such as the presentation of migrant doctors and
nurses, discussions on the long European history of cultural diversity, the promotion
of refugee art projects and other positive representations of migrant and refugee
everyday life, reflect an alternative to the binaries and divisions between projects for
identity and community on the one hand and projects for participation and inclusion
on the other.
Local: Interpreting the Mainstream*/The Example of London Greek Radio
Much of the success of diasporic media across Europe depends on the continuing
loyalty of the migrant generation to such media. This loyalty is more complex than
can be fully explored here, but one of the elements worth addressing in the context of
this paper is minority languages. Many members of diasporic and migrant groups still
have low skills in the majority language and feel more comfortable with their native
language. The level of language skills has multiple consequences for economic,
cultural and political participation in European societies and for gaining access to
and understanding of information about services, rights (e.g. social benefits, training,
jobs) and political developments in the country of residence. Many of the local and
national minority media pay special attention to this area, publishing and broadcasting
relevant information in minority languages and in popular and simple
language that makes it accessible to members of a group with low literacy and low
mainstream language skills.
One such example is the weekly programme on social benefits broadcast on the
London Greek Radio (LGR). This programme is presented in the Greek language and
aims at popularising information about benefits offered by the state and local
authorities. The programme also encourages listeners to get in touch with the
producer and presenter (a Greek working in social services) and to seek answers to
their specific concerns. Many listeners of LGR mention this programme as an
accountable and constant source of information (Georgiou 2001). As they argue, it is
a source of information they trust and which speaks their own language. Such
programmes enforce the feeling that they can participate in the broader society while
keeping their diasporic particularity.
It is the local diasporic media which play this role most often. Being usually semiprofessional
and set up by members of local diasporic groups, they reflect many of the
characteristics of the groups they address. The local media adopt the role of the
mediator of mainstream information to the particular group for a number of reasons.
494 M. Georgiou
Often they are obliged by the state that licences (and often funds) them to do so.
More importantly, by including information that relates to the mainstream and
which goes beyond particular information and entertainment products (e.g. news
from Greece and Cyprus, Greek pop music), they reflect the complexity of their
audiences. Diasporic audiences are positioned in complex cultural settings, which
include particular connections and a sense of belonging, but also imply engagement
in universalistic projects of communication and (struggles for) participation in
multicultural societies.
Conclusions
The three case-studies above are an attempt to illustrate the construction of diasporic
particularism, which is sustained neither in binary oppositions between the
mainstream and the minorities, the national and the transnational, nor in media
systems that are closed systems by and for themselves. The themes discussed above
invite us to understand diasporic media cultures as an interplay of diffe´rance:
. . . every concept and meaning is inscribed in a chain or a system within which it
refers to the others, to other concepts and meanings by means of the systematic
play of differences. . . . Its political value cannot be essentialized; that is to say, it
can’t be snatched out of the play of similarity and differences which are constantly
constructing it, it can only be defined in relation to all the other forces which are
trying, as it were, to define the cultural sphere at that moment (Hall 2001: 11).
This play of diffe´rance and of non-closure relates: (i) to the character of diasporic
cultures as changing, unfixed, contested and non-singular; (ii) to the continuities and
dialectic interrelation between spatial positionings; and (iii) to the interweaving of
the ideologies of particularism*/i.e. identity and community*/and of universalism*/i.e.
media culture, communication, construction and participation in
democratic (mediated) spaces.
The shape of diasporic media cultures, as illustrated in the context of the
universalismÁ/particularism continuum, has three broad implications for multicultural
Europe:
. Different minority groups raise issues of recognition and of alternative politics
within universalism. Just as the feminist movement fought for recognition of
difference and for alternative forms of organisation in the name of the universal
values of equality, inclusion and democracy, so other minority groups aim at reshaping
the agenda of universalism. In similar ways to the feminists, many
diasporic and ethnic minority media projects argue that equality is not based on
sameness or assimilation, but actually on the celebration and promotion of
difference. Such minority movements propose forms of particularisation of
universalism and re-shape universalistic European values.
. The development and success of minority diasporic media are, at least partly,
expressions of reaction and resistance to the universalistic ideologies of the nationJournal
of Ethnic and Migration Studies 495
state. As Roland Robertson (1992) argues, the modern state system is a model of
Gesellschaft, based on concentration of power, bureaucracy and hierarchical
structures. This model leads to alienation and suppression of cultural expressions
that threaten the power and dominance of the state. Minority or community
media projects challenge the alienation and suppression of free creative expression
which takes place through the mechanisms of control adopted by the nation-state,
and propose alternatives. These alternatives develop, either on the basis of what
people have in common against concentrated power and the state*/i.e. their
common humanity*/or on the basis of ideologies which see one specific
particularism as more meaningful than the all-inclusive modern state. Both
examples can be seen in diasporic media projects*/the first in community projects
and the second in fundamentalist projects. Both expressions of particularism
emerge through processes of mirroring/continuity/interpretation of universalism.
A real consequence for Europe is the tension between minority media and the
European states. The universalistic project of the nation-state implies inclusion
and participation of all citizens. At the same time, such alternative cultures which
are not contained or controlled by the state are seen as potential threats to its
power and integrity. European state policies in this area are full of contradictions*/there
is an attempt on the one hand to include/assimilate minority
media and, on the other, to control/suppress their power and influence.
. The Orientalism thesis (Said 1985) has been very influential for thinking about the
Othering of non-Western subjects and cultures and for analysing the (re-)production
of relations of power between the West and the rest. The other side of
Orientalism, which is understudied, relates to the interpretations of the West by
the rest, especially through tense global encounters (Robertson 1992). Minority
media cultures bring this interpretation of the West by the rest within the Western
societies, within the limits of Europe. The singularity of European universalism
(and its Orientalism) is challenged from within.
The development of diasporic media cultures across Europe is about flows and
scapes that cut across Europe vertically and horizontally and which expand beyond it;
it is also about vertical and horizontal schemes of difference*/of diffe´rance, not the
binary*/across diasporic communities and about struggles of representation and
power within and beyond the specific groups. Recognising and acknowledging the
development of emergent networks and flows that challenge the mainstream is not
about celebrating particularism, diversity and cultural richness alone. Observing
diasporic identities and communities in their spatial continuity and as they are
sustained primarily through mediated networks and in the merging of ideologies of
universalism and particularism has implications both for our thinking of multicultural
societies as truly diverse societies (beyond the hype and thin multiculturalism)
and for our thinking about transnational media cultures as the
outcome of the universalismÁ/particularism continuum.
496 M. Georgiou
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Roger Silverstone for his comments and advice during the research
on diasporic media cultures across Europe and during the development of this paper.
Special thanks also to P.X. Beck for his inspiring input when this paper was no more
than a vague idea.
Notes
[1] The author acknowledges the support of the EU 5th
Framework Programme (Contract
HPRN*/CT2000Á/00063: The European Media Technology and Everyday Life Network) in
the preparation of this paper. The research was conducted at the LSE with the direction of
Professor Roger Silverstone. Apart from the research I conducted, a network of researchers
from across Europe participated in the collection of data. I am indebted to them for their
hard work. All the reports produced for this research are available online at http://
www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EMTEL/Minorities/minorities.html.
[2] Of course, with the recent EU enlargement and the inclusion of several new member-states,
the demographics will have significantly altered.
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