Multilingual media repertoires of young people in the migration society: A plea for a language and culture-aware approach to media education

Abstract

Digital media provide easy access to media content in multiple languages from local, national, and transnational contexts. This accessibility of diverse content enables young people in the migration society to develop multilingual and transnational media repertoires: they have the option to continuously and strategically navigate between different platforms, between different contexts and multiple languages. In this paper, we discuss how multilingualism and transnationalism can be used as key concepts for understanding the cross-media practices of young people and their participation in the migration society. Based on focus groups with young people living in a culturally diverse and socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhood of Bremen, Germany, we discuss how and why young people choose specific media content in a specific language in their daily media practices. Our discussion of the findings then focuses on the question of how media education in the migration society can take the multilingual and transnational media repertoires into account and benefit from it.

Keywords

digital media media education migration multilingualism media repertoires

Introduction

The civic participation of young people in the migration society is today influenced by their multilingual identities and multilingual media repertoires. More and more young people are using multiple languages in their everyday lives, especially in countries that are transformed by increasing migration movements. Germany as a country that only recently officially recognized its status as an immigration country has developed specific terms and concepts to distinguish between those parts of the population being of German descent and those having a so-called “migration background.” Regarding this distinction, the young people who migrated him/herself from another country to Germany as well as those whose parents have migrated to Germany are referred to as youth with a “migration background.” While this distinction has been subject to critique by migration researchers (see Will, 2022 for a critical discussion of the political and societal implications of this distinction), the term migration society, as it is used also in this paper, has been developed to underline the transforming character of migration for the whole (German) society (see Mecheril, 2016 for this term and a discussion of the German context).

Migration is one of the driving forces behind the increasing relevance of multilingualism as people with migration background often switch between the dominant languages in their countries of settlement and their heritage languages (Androutsopoulos, 2006; Duff, 2015). The media practices of young people with migration background as well as complex multicultural identities are also influenced by this migration-related multilingualism (Androutsopoulos, 2006; Bozdag, 2013 among others). Thus, multilingualism is key for understanding the self-perception and (mediated) civic participation of young people in the migration society.

Digital media foster multilingual media use as they open up a possibility for easy access to media content in multiple languages (Kim, 2016; Schreiber, 2015). This offers young people in the migration society the possibility to choose among or mix the multiple languages that they speak during their leisure time activities. While young people’s creative multilingual practices remain uncontested in out-of-school contexts, they are subject to critique and even mistrust in the school environment due to their multilingualism. In the frame of the unquestioned monolingual notion of the German state schools (Gogolin, 2021), the use of migrant languages is considered to be a threat to learning academic German (Dirim and Mecheril, 2018). It is also considered as a threat to the official measures of integration and mutual understanding in schools (Dirim and Mecheril, 2018).

In contrast to this picture that reinforces a monolingual school culture, multilingualism came out as a central element of the media repertoires of our young study participants young people (although it was not the main focus of the study in the beginning), who participated in our study. Therefore, in this paper we focus on the relationship between multilingualism and everyday digital media use by youth in the migration society and focus on the following main research questions:

- What role(s) does multilingualism play in the media use and repertoires of young people in the migration society?

- How can multilingualism be addressed in the context of media education and teacher education, and how can this also be used to enrich media education practices?

The research material that will be discussed in this paper is part of a participatory action research project and includes focus groups with young people with diverse backgrounds (13–15 years) and participatory observations in a school that is based in a socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse neighborhood in Bremen, Germany. In our findings section, we will demonstrate how multilingualism plays a role for the media choice, use and identity formation in the migration society and how these choices are influenced by power relations and social contexts.

Based on our analysis, we will make a plea for media education and teacher education in this article to develop a more language-aware stance in order to be more inclusive and acknowledge diverse identities and media repertoires. Media education in Germany is also shaped by the myth of monolingualism. We believe that school education generally and media education more specifically can benefit from multilingualism and should also address it in a way to make people with diverse backgrounds feel included with their socio-linguistic identities. This is necessary for supporting the participation of students in the school context and also for encouraging them for civic participation in broader contexts (García and Flores, 2012).

Multilingualism, media, and linguistic identities

Considering the diversity of minority languages, local dialects, accents, sign languages, and heritage languages among others, we can argue that multilingualism is much more common than it is assumed in common discourses about nation-states. Yet traditional mass media environments within nation-states were and are still mostly shaped by a myth of monolingualism within the nation-state (Busch, 2003: 224). Most mass media content is produced in the dominant and official language of a particular nation-state. Moreover, the media themselves have contributed to the nation-building processes and this myth of a singular national language in many nation-states (Busch, 2003: 224; see also Anderson, 1983). However, nations themselves have always been multilingual looking at local languages, minorities, and diaspora communities (Busch, 2003; Daase et al., 2017, Gogolin, 2021). Thus, minority media and diasporic media channels have been an exception to this monolingual myth around mass media representing linguistic diversity within nations (Busch, 2003: 224).

Two major developments in the last decades paved the way for a more multilingual media environment today. First, due to globalization and increasing superdiversity within nation-states as well as an increasing number of migrants and refugees worldwide, more and more people are multilingual (Blommaert, 2010; Duff, 2015). This is also evident in the increasing amount of scholarly work focusing on the topic (e.g. Blommaert, 2010; Daase et al., 2017; Dirim and Mecheril, 2018; Gogolin, 2021). Second, through digital technologies, media communication in different languages has become much more available and easily accessible in people’s everyday lives (Androutsopoulos, 2015; Schreiber, 2015). Currently, there is an increasing interest in exploring the relationship between multilingualism and digital media (see e.g., Androutsopoulos, 2015; Han, 2021; Kim, 2016; Lam and Rosario-Ramos, 2009; Schreiber, 2015).

The concept of multilingualism itself has evolved moving towards a more complex understanding. The traditional definition of bilingualism or multilingualism was based on the understanding of languages as separate systems and thinking of “multilingual speakers as double or parallel monolinguals” (Schreiber, 2015: 72). Today there is a shift toward understanding individuals’ semiotic resources as a complex system (Blommaert, 2010; Duff, 2015: 102). Concepts like translanguaging (Li, 2012), code-mashing (Fraiberg, 2010), or linguistic/language repertoires (Busch, 2017) are increasingly used to describe this complexity referring to both “going between different linguistic structures and systems” and “going beyond them” (Han, 2021: 30). We use multilingualism here not to refer to multiple parallel languages, but rather to the latter understanding of the term to refer to the multiplicity of languages that serve as semiotic sources within a complex system (Blommaert, 2010).

Languages are key to how people perceive themselves and others, thus there is a strong relationship between “identity work” and languages (Duff, 2015: 60). Speaking a language that is used in different parts of the world, fosters the imagination of being part of a wider linguistic community (Duff, 2015: 61). Of course, linguistic identities are not just about how people see and imagine themselves, but also about how they are seen and positioned by others (Duff, 2015: 61). The perception of different languages (and the individuals and communities speaking these languages) are shaped by specific socio-geographical contexts and power relations (Farr and Song, 2011). The term “language ideologies” is used to refer to ideologies that construct the meanings of languages in a hierarchical relationship (Farr and Song, 2011; Silverstein, 1979). Thus, people’s language choices are never neutral choices among equally competing languages but are also a result of existing power relations that shape sociolinguistic contexts and are linked with identity building (Bale and Lackner, 2023; Dirim and Mecheril, 2018) as well as experiences of discrimination due to language use (Nguyen and Hajek, 2022).

Furthermore, institutional regulations also contribute to the formation of language ideologies. For example, schools in various countries are based on the notion of monolingualism. In the German context, multilingualism in schools is only supported in the framework of “foreign languages” (with English being the compulsory first foreign language and mostly French, Spanish, or Latin being the second one). When it comes to the lived experiences of multilingual students from migrant families, linguistic restrictions for the use of languages like Turkish, Arabic, and Russian in the school context are very common (Dirim and Mecheril, 2018). In comparison to these rather restricting practices in state institutions of education, digital media today open up new avenues for multilingual identity development as it will be discussed in the next section. Digital media provides opportunities for identity construction beyond the possibilities of local environments and the formal and monolingual environments of (language) classrooms (Schreiber, 2015: 69). Kim (2016: 254) argues that the youth engagement in new media spaces has the potential to disrupt the existing power relations among languages and “facilitate an affinity for multilingualism.” New media also open up possibilities for cosmopolitan aspirations giving individuals a possibility to connect with other cultures and languages and learn new languages increasing the complexity of individuals’ linguistic repertoires and identity orientations.

Multilingualism and transnational media repertoires

Multilingualism has an influence on mediated communication like it does on face-to-face communication. Simultaneously, the field of linguistics is also transformed by increasing digitalization and the increasing number of available communication media that are used in our everyday social interactions (Androutsopoulos, 2021). Thus, there is a growing body of research that focuses on the relationship between multilingualism and (digital) media (e.g. Androutsopoulos, 2006; 2015, 2021; Kim, 2016). Han (2021) reviews this growing field through a systematic literature review and identifies five key areas in this field focusing on the recognition of cultural and linguistic diversity; construction of multifaceted identities online; technological affordances; virtual communities and global citizenship and intercultural exchanges (Han, 2021: 27). In all these five areas of research, the experiences of migrants, refugees, and diasporas have been at the center of interest with a focus on migration-related multilingualism (e.g. Androutsopoulos, 2006; Lam ad Rosario-Ramos, 2009).

Multilingualism has always played a role for diasporas and migrants and their media production (Busch, 2003: 226–227). However, digital technologies enable a much more affordable and accessible possibility for multilingual media production and consumption. Furthermore, digital media make the transnational consumption of media in diverse languages and from different countries more accessible (Schreiber, 2015). Thus, they open up new possibilities for language choices, code-switching, and code-mashing as well as creative articulations of diverse semiotic resources and translanguaging (Androutsopoulos, 2006). Thus, more research has focused on the written and audiovisual forms of language use on different online platforms in recent years. For example, Androutsopoulos (2006: 175) focuses on websites produced by and for migrants and analyses language choices, code-switching, and language mixing on these platforms. He argues that language choice depends on the topic of discussion besides other factors (Androutsopoulos, 2006: 184). Similarly, looking at young people with migration background from diverse origins and living in the US, Lam ad Rosario-Ramos (2009) argue that young people use multiple languages while maintaining their social ties across borders and receive information from different sources in their “home” and “host” countries. They argue that these literacy practices of a transnational scope should be taken into account in the literacy education of young people (ibid.).

Sociolinguists increasingly recognize the interrelationship between digital media and linguistic repertoires of individuals (e.g., Androutsopoulos, 2021; Kim, 2016; Tagg and Lyons, 2021). Several scholars have also suggested new concepts for better explaining this relationship between linguistic repertoires of multilinguals and digital media. For instance, the concept of “networked multilingualism” according to Androutsopoulos (2015) refers to the use of multilingual content on digital media that is also influenced by global mediascapes and networked audiences. Another concept “polymedia repertoires” is proposed by Tagg and Lyons (2021: 725). Polymedia repertoires build on the concept of “polymedia” by Madianou and Miller (2013) emphasizing the integrated nature of different media. Their analysis focuses on the use of messaging apps in the lives of multilingual migrants in the UK. The concept of polymedia repertoires highlights “how people move fluidly between media platforms, semiotic modes and linguistic resources in the course of their everyday interactions” (Tagg and Lyons, 2021: 725). The concept contextualizes digital media communication within the broader context of their social practices.

In the highly complex world of mediated communication today, users continuously make choices among media platforms and devices based on their resources, their social situation, aims and motivation as well as the affordances of the different media. As we would like to emphasize the relevance of multilingualism in these practices of cross-media use of individuals and the interrelations between the choices of particular media forms and specific linguistic resources, we would like to make use of the concept of “media repertoires” (Hasebrink and Popp, 2006) and link this to the concept of “linguistic repertoires” (Busch, 2017). Media repertoires aim to understand “how people combine contacts with different media and different kinds of content” (Hasebrink and Popp, 2006: 369) and refer to the “entirety of media that a person regularly uses” (Hasebrink and Hepp, 2017). The repertoire-based approach stresses the fact that individuals’ media use is also influenced by the interrelations between the components of the different media. Thus, understanding media use requires a holistic approach which is proposed by the concept of media repertoires (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012: 757). To highlight both the choices and interrelations related to multiple linguistic sources and the interrelations and crossings across the different media technologies and their affordances, we would like to use the concept of media repertoires. In the findings section, we demonstrate how these media repertoires today are highly multilingual.

Methods

The presented paper is based on a comprehensive qualitative participatory action research project that aimed to develop learning scenarios about digital media literacy in the school context together with the teachers and the students to empower the students by improving their digital literacies through a participatory method. To understand the school culture and the students’ and the teachers’ perspectives, the research also included participatory observations, focus groups with students, and interviews with teachers and representatives of the school administration. The research took place in the Oberschule Bremen¹ which is located in a socio-economically disadvantaged and culturally diverse neighborhood of Bremen. The participating students were attending 7. and 8. grade at the time of the research (ages 13–15). In total, 11 focus groups were conducted in different periods. The data collection took place from January 2020 to April 2021. The focus groups were conducted in three rounds; in person in March 2020 before the pandemic, in person in September 2020 after the re-opening of the schools during the pandemic, and online in March–April 2021 as the school had transitioned to online education again. Originally, only one round of focus groups was planned in the study, however, the research design was adopted to include multiple rounds of focus groups during the pandemic to capture different phases of school lockdowns and online education. The focus group sizes varied from 4 to 6 participants and took around 70–90 minutes. 47 students (22 males and 25 females) in total took part in the focus groups. Not all of them were part of all three rounds of focus groups. The students were also asked to fill out a small questionnaire before the start of the focus groups. The questionnaire included questions about the demographic background of the students, languages spoken at home, and the country of birth as well as the media devices that the students owned. The participants were not directly asked if they identified themselves as individuals “with a migration background.” Asking this would be an act of labeling and exclusion by assuming that they cannot identify themselves as an unquestioned member of the German society or as German. Four students indicated that they speak only German at home, and the other students indicated that they speak at least one other language at home including Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Spanish, Albanian, English, and Bulgarian. Eleven of the students were born outside of Germany and the rest was born in Germany. Four of the 47 students did not fill out this questionnaire because they only participated in the online focus groups and not in the first two rounds of focus groups, which took place in person in the school building. All focus groups and interviews have been conducted in German, thus the quotes in this article are translated into English.

The pandemic had an impact both on the research design of the project (e.g. the last round of focus groups was conducted only online) and on the content of the interviews. During the pandemic, young people reported an increase in their screen time and it also had an effect on their general well-being among other things. However, multilingualism during media use, which is the focus of this paper, was a consistent theme in all three rounds of focus groups before and during the pandemic.

The focus group discussions were moderated through a semi-structured guideline that included questions about the everyday use of various media for school and out-of-school activities. The guideline was based on a repertoire-oriented approach focusing on the entirety of media use (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012). The analytical framework offered by Hasebrink and Domeyer (2012: 760) includes looking at the relevant components of media repertoires (e.g., genre, topics), the social practices related to media use, the relations between the components of media repertoires, principles guiding the composition of the repertoires and the overall subjective sense of the media repertoires.

Throughout our research process, we also continuously discussed the ethical dimensions of our research working with young people who might be disadvantaged in society. First, we engaged in self-reflection and critical dialogues among ourselves questioning our positions and our assumptions about our participants. Second, we engaged in ongoing dialogues with our young participants about the research process and their rights and expectations. Third, we designed our research process carefully to avoid any stigmatization for the participants (e.g., by carefully choosing our terminology when speaking with them). Last but not least, we chose a participatory methodology to include them in the research process to contribute to their empowerment in the digital environments through active participation.

The research design of the presented study entails limitations in its scope and sample size. First, the research findings cannot be generalized due to its focus on a specific neighborhood in a mid-size Western city in Germany. However, the in-depth understanding of this context that is provided by this research can be insightful for understanding other culturally diverse, multilingual, and digitalized contexts and lifeworlds that also intersect with socio-economic disadvantages. Furthermore, the insights about the leisure time uses of digital media are mainly based on the self-statements of the research participants. Nevertheless, the researcher could observe the use of multiple languages in the classroom setting, for example, through language mixing or the use of heritage languages in smaller groups.

Findings: Multilingual cross-media use in everyday life

In this section, we will focus on the findings of the focus groups and participatory observations concerning the language use of interviewed young people from the Oberschule Bremen. We will discuss how these young people use multiple languages in their everyday media practices and how this relates to language ideologies. Furthermore, languages are an important aspect of intergenerational bonding for young people and their self-perceptions and identities. Last but not least, we will also discuss the motives of young people for choosing a particular language for media practices in specific social situations.

Language choice and language ideologies in everyday life

As we will discuss in the following sub-sections, multilingualism is relevant for almost all media practices of our young participants including consumption of media content and mediated interpersonal communication. The most commonly used interpersonal medium by the participants of the focus groups is the instant messaging application WhatsApp. The participants indicate that they are involved in multiple WhatsApp groups which are formed around diverse social ties including their peer-groups, family groups, and class groups. The use of languages within the particular groups is dependent on the members of the group, the social context as well as the functions of the group:

CB:

Hmm. So class groups then, right?

Halit:

Girls groups

Ayse:

So one with all of the girls in the classroom and another one with only three or so

CB:

Who?

Ayse:

Yes, Dilan and yet two others, so Turna and Nilay

CB:

Do you speak German or partly Turkish?

Ayse:

So when, there, because we are then only four of us and we are all Turks, then we speak Turkish, but in the other group with Abena and Mani and so, there we mostly speak German. And Anastasia as well.

CB:

The girls

Ayse:

Yes, right

Alex:

You speak in your own languages with each other

Dilan:

So everyone speaks a different language

As can be seen in the dialogue above, the students are receptive to the social context while they are switching between languages. For example, while they speak the shared language German with each other in the larger group of people from diverse linguistic backgrounds, they prefer to speak Turkish in their small group, where it is spoken by everyone. Similar strategies of context-dependent language choice could also be observed in the classroom context. In class, students only spoke another language than German during assignments for small groups where everyone could speak this language or in informal conversations during the breaks. Following Ayse’s explanation above about the use of languages in their groups, one of the boys in the focus groups criticizes them because they speak in “[their] own languages with each other.” By emphasizing the phrase “your languages,” Alex implies that they are forming a distinct group with their “own language,” separating themselves from the rest. This may be interpreted as an affirmation of the public discourses in which the use of other languages than German in school is stigmatized linguistically as an act of “unwillingness to integrate” or as an act of “segregation.” An implicit allegation by Alex despite Ayse’s and her friends’ careful efforts to use German in mixed groups and use Turkish only when Turkish speakers are around. This dialogue gives insight into how language ideologies influence young people’s perceptions of different languages and people using these languages. Thus, while lived multilingualism contributes to boundary-making among young people with different backgrounds this also may lead to tensions in the multilingual classrooms of the monolingual school (Gogolin, 2021). Dilan’s reply to Alex above saying that everyone (in the classroom) speaks another language can be seen as an attempt to counter his arguments and to normalize multilingualism in the everyday context of the classroom.

Intergenerational bonding and linguistic identities

The use of media in heritage languages can be a key intergenerational bonding practice for young people with migration background. Many focus group participants indicated that they often consumed media content in their heritage languages as part of their joint activities with intergenerational family members. For example, Nihal would always watch the daytime series (telenovelas) when she was visiting her grandmother after school in the afternoons:

CB:

Do you watch it together then? You and your grandma?

Nihal:

So before it was so that before that I was often at my Grandmother’s [place]. I also often slept there because I found it very cool. And then we always watched Beni Affet or so. Very cool old series and so on. And then my grandma always showed me series and I always found them cool and then we watched them together.

For Nihal, watching Turkish series was a nice activity for connecting with her grandmother. As can be seen in the examples below heritage languages keep their importance throughout different media as a reference point for the identities of multilingual young people so that linguistic repertoires meet media repertoires in a quite complex way:

Nevin:

So sometimes we watch films in Arabic and Turkish because we are Arabs and Turks. And yes, we also speak Arabic and Turkish together at home.

CB:

Hmm. And how do you watch that? In the internet or on TV?

Nevin:

Aeh simply on YouTube and sometimes on Netflix or Prime Video.

Maja:

Yes, so me and my parents, so Netflix for example, aeh, when we spend time together and so on, we watch it in Polish because they cannot speak German. So they understand it well, but they cannot [do it] and therefore we watch it in Polish.

CB:

Can you speak Polish?

Maja:

Yes, I am Polish

The examples from Nevin and Maja here and Ayse (“we are all Turks, then we speak Turkish”) in the first quote show how media and language use and national or ethnic self-identification patterns go hand in hand with each other. The close link between language and ethnic or even national identity is noticeable as Nevin says that she watches films in Arabic and Turkish because they are “Arabs and Turks” and similarly, Maja sees it as taken for granted that she can speak Polish because she is “Polish.” For both young girls, there is a connection between their perception of themselves, their cultural identity linked to national or ethnic backgrounds (being Polish or Arabs and Turks), and using a particular language. For the youth in our sample, the media are important for the expression of these linguistic identities. The multilingual practice also offers a source to stay connected to family members and their shared heritage languages and to improve language proficiency. In some cases, like that of Nevin, two or more heritage languages are relevant for a particular family with mixed ethnic identifications. And there are also others, who speak German and a further language at home. Contemporary digital platforms afford flexibility so that content can easily be adjusted to the particular linguistics repertories of these families with diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Language choice across different media

Multilingual media use among the interviewed young people is not only limited to family activities. Multilingualism is also an important aspect of other interest-driven media practices of the young focus group participants. They do not only consume media content in German, but also in English, which is the compulsory second language that students learn in the school context in Germany, and in heritage languages including Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Romanian, or Polish among others. For example, Martin is interested in games. As a part of this, he watches gamers on YouTube and adds that his “favorite YouTuber is even in English.” Similarly, Yassin is interested in games and watches game videos on YouTube. Expressing his interest in game videos, Yassin himself emphasizes that all his “YouTubers” speak Arabic and he believes that the best YouTubers are from Saudi-Arabia. Yassin comes from Syria. He has been learning German since he came to Germany a few years ago. His close identification with an Arabic-speaking YouTuber can be understood against this biographic background. But his knowledge of the Arabic language and his interest in games also connect him with broader global contexts including Saudi Arabia. Similar to Yassin in this example, other young people who participated in the focus groups also use digital media with cosmopolitan aspirations to connect with other countries, cultures, and languages beyond Germany and their heritage languages and cultures. Digital media also offers an alternative to the restrictive language repertoire that is offered in the school context, mostly prioritizing English and reinforcing the dominance of English as a second language. One of the most commonly mentioned examples here was the aspiration to learn the Korean language. This goes hand in hand with the trend among contemporary German youth consumption of Korean pop music and Korean series and animes as part of the youth culture as can be seen in the two quotes below:

CB:

And how did you come across that? I mean Korea.

Sophie:

At some point, I started with K-Pop first, that is Korean pop, and then it became more and more intense. Then it was not one single group anymore, but 500 groups that you liked. Then a friend also started. And then another friend and another friend. Then we chatted about it (..) it happened so that I want to go to Korea and I also would like to learn Korean now.

Nihal:

Yes, yes. You can watch it in German, it is your decision. But some are not available in German, then you have to do it with the subtitles.

Hejar:

Subtitles are terrible.

Nihal:

Yes, it is really stupid, but you also learn the language in a different manner like that and ehm it is then also again something completely new.

As can be seen in the quotes above, leisure time activities and interest in particular cultural products can motivate young people to consume content in other languages and/or increase their motivation to learn other languages. Digital media offer an easily accessible gateway to different cultural and linguistic sources at low costs. These engagements lead to forms of non-formal learning during the leisure time use of media increasing their interest in learning languages and learning about new cultures and geographies. This is an especially important opportunity for widening the transnational horizon for young people with limited resources for physical mobility. In this regard, digital media open up possibilities for cosmopolitan practices and aspirations in the broader sense of the term. These practices take place simultaneously with engagements and embedding in the local and national contexts (Leurs and Ponzanesi, 2018).

The language choices while using media also depend on the type of activity and the level of self-efficacy (and thus the ease of understanding) of a particular language. For example, Nazli says that she sometimes watches “YouTubers, who come from England or the US” and she can understand it very well. But when she is doing something incidentally [nebenbei], then she likes watching things in German. She explains the reason for this as below:

Nazli:

I like to watch things in German the best because then I can do additional things. Because German is my mother tongue and aeh that I can listen to it with one ear let’s say, and I can additionally write something or so. [. . .] In other languages, for example, when I watch something in English, I have to concentrate. That means I cannot then tidy up my room or so. Then. Have to sit in front of it and listen like that because I do not understand it as well.

As Nazli expresses above, the choice of language while engaging with different media also depends on the particular activities around it. The intensity of the media activity together with the social context in which it is being practiced plays an important role in language choice during a particular media activity.

In this section, we discussed why and how young people make use of multiple languages while engaging with different types of media. Our findings demonstrate that overall media repertoires of young people in the migration society prove to be multilingual in a very complex and individual way. While navigating through this complexity, they make their choices based on the availability and affordances of the different media, their interests (e.g., K-Pop, basketball), the social context they are involved in (even transnationally) and the present others, their language proficiency and the particular social activities around it.

Discussion and conclusion

Based on our study focusing on digital media use among students from secondary education living in a socioeconomically disadvantaged and culturally diverse neighborhood, we discussed how multilingualism is an important aspect of the identities and cross-media practices of young people in the migration society. Several prior studies show how multilingualism is relevant for the use of different types of media such as text messages, web portals, and social media (e.g., Androutsopoulos, 2006; Lam and Rosario-Ramos, 2009; Tagg and Lyons, 2021). Our study demonstrates how young people with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds navigate through different languages and digital media in their everyday lives forming different multilingual media repertoires.

Media content in the heritage language as a bonding leisure time activity has been a part of migrant families’ media repertoires for a long time (Cunningham, 2001). Audiovisual media content in heritage languages was available through video cassettes that were sold or rented out in the so-called import–export shops in the 1970s (Kolar-Panov, 2003) and 1980s or through satellite dishes in the 1990s and afterward (Aksoy and Robins, 2000). Today, digital media makes content in heritage languages much more accessible, and switching between media content in multiple languages is much easier than before. As Kim (2016) also argues, these developments complicate the formation of linguistic identities of young people even further. In the findings section, we discussed how our young participants navigate through different languages and social contexts and how languages play a role in intergenerational bonding and their identity-formation. We also pointed out the potential of multilingual digital media use by young people who are socio-economically disadvantaged and limited in their physical mobility, but yet are interested in discovering the world and other languages through media.

In this section, we would like to discuss the relevance of our findings for formal education in the broadest sense and for media education more specifically. While discussing this, we would like to recall findings on linguicism in German schools described above or—as Gogolin puts it: “the monolingual practice of the multilingual school” (Gogolin 2021)—a statement still valid (see also Herzog-Punzenberger et al., 2017). This practice is sharply in contradiction to the above-discussed multilingual practices of young people in their everyday lives. Multilingualism is relevant for identity-building processes, intergenerational bonding, and transnational mobility of all youth (not only for those with a so-called “migration background”) in the migration society that has been repeatedly proven in empirical studies throughout different disciplines from sociolinguistics to educational science (for the international discussion, see Ayres-Bennett and Fisher, 2022; Wolf-Farré et al., 2021). The fight against racialized language practices in school requires more than the acceptance of multilingualism in the classroom. Bale and Lackner (2023) demonstrated in their empirical studies for the Canadian context that a comprehensive inclusion of multilingualism needs to be implemented both into school life and subject-based courses. They also emphasize the importance of acknowledging linguistic plurality in teacher education.

Also, the practice of media education in schools remains mainly monolingual in many contexts and also in Germany. Whereas the potential of using digital media for language education is discussed broadly in language education scholarship (e.g., Kim, 2016; Lam and Rosario-Ramos, 2009; Schreiber, 2015), the role of multilingualism in media education is not yet sufficiently addressed. As the examples from our focus groups show, young people already discuss the relevance of multiple languages in their everyday context and about their media use. Thus, media education should recognize and reflect these media realities of young people and address the increasingly complex relationship between current media environments, individual media repertoires, and diverse linguistic repertoires. Schools can guide young people to critically question the issue of power around languages and to reflect on their uses of languages and their perception of languages spoken by others and encourage them to participate in society using their multilingual media repertoires.

Multilingual media practices do not take place in a social void and language choice is influenced by power relations, national language ideologies, personal backgrounds of individuals, and different practices of in- and exclusion in the public sphere and especially in formal education. The language choice while using specific media technologies is also influenced by the specific social contexts and people involved, their specific social practices, personal interests, national language ideologies, and the affordances of the specific media technologies (e.g., the availability of multiple languages, subtitles). Critical language awareness is an approach that is developed to address and question these kinds of existing hierarchies among languages and language ideologies, of which people are often unaware (Clark et al., 1991; Fairclough, 1992/2014). Critically addressing the meaning of different languages for media-related practices and addressing power hierarchies among languages during media use should be a part of teacher education. This would enable the teachers to guide students in reflecting on their positionalities in society and empower them to consciously make use of their multilingual (media) repertoires. Addressing the link between languages and critical media education in the framework of teacher education and schools can contribute to fighting back against linguicism in schools by destigmatizing minority and migrant languages.

Media education can also benefit from a language-aware approach in multiple ways. First, school education that takes these conclusions from our findings into account can be especially understood as an important contribution to the empowerment of youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods and communities as it would enable them to raise their voice and articulate their diverse socio-linguistic identities in the context of the school. Second, discussing media messages in different languages in the classroom can open up discussions about the construction of media messages in different contexts. This could raise young people’s awareness about the constructed nature of media messages and the role of media, culture, and languages in shaping their understanding of the world. Third, discussing multilingualism and the role of languages in different media environments could also increase young people’s awareness about power relations concerning media and languages. For example, a discussion about available sources on the internet and their languages or in AI systems could foster their insight into how language-related biases function in digital environments. The examples discussed in the previous section demonstrate how young people’s perceptions of multilingual media use are influenced by existing language ideologies that place languages in migration societies like Germany in hierarchical order. Critically questioning the perception of different languages around media use could also help to raise consciousness for the acceptance of the multilingual reality in society and the classroom and question both teachers’ and students’ pre-existing assumptions about languages. Fourth, discussing content in multiple languages in the context of media education could also help to de-westernize the discourses within the media literacy discussions as it could turn our attention to other media systems and issues that are relevant in other parts of the world (Melki, 2018).

We are aware that this list of arguments in favor of integrating critical language awareness in media education is not exhaustive and there are multiple ways that media education should take into consideration and can benefit from the increasingly multilingual media repertoires of young people. In our discussion, we focused mainly on school education and media education for young people, but media education is a broad field and is relevant to everyone in society. Furthermore, multilingualism is neither restricted to young people nor people with “migration backgrounds.” Taking dialects, local languages, minorities, and sign languages into account, we can argue that almost everyone is multilingual to a certain extent. Thus, a language-aware media education approach could contribute to a more inclusive framework for media education for everyone in society. And, future research can focus on the multilingual media practices of different groups and expand our discussion about language-aware media education.

In this paper, we demonstrated how multilingualism is key for understanding young people’s media repertoires in the migration society. García and Flores (2012: 232) argue: “Unless teachers’ pedagogies include the language practices of students, and unless all students are taught in ways that support and develop their diverse language practices, there cannot be any meaningful participation in education, and thus, in society.” Similar arguments can be made for media education. Media education can only encourage meaningful participation of youth by acknowledging their multilingual identities and multilingual media repertoires, and empowering them for civic engagement in the broader societal contexts.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper was written in the framework of the project INCLUDED, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 841951.

ORCID iD

Çiğdem Bozdağ

Notes

Author biographies

Dr. Çiğdem Bozdağ is an associate professor at the Research Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen. Her research interests include media and migration, digital media use, digital literacy, digital inclusion, and media education in schools.

Prof Dr. Yasemin Karakasoğlu is a head of the research group on „Education in the Migration Society“ at the University of Bremen. In her teaching and research, she focusses on national school systems and teacher training informed by the theory of transnationalism and critical race theory, and also on issues of Islam in the field of education.

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