Palgrave Pivot
Anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise in Europe, focused on Islam and on Arabs, and manifested in increasingly rigorous immigration regimes. What are Arabic Europeans watching on television and how does it affect their identities as Europeans? New quantitative and qualitative evidence from seven capitals shows that, far from being isolated in ethnic media ghettoes, they are critical news consumers in Arabic and European languages. Arabic speakers from the Maghreb, concentrated in Paris, Amsterdam and Madrid are bicultural, focusing on media in their European and Arabic homelands. Other Middle Eastern Arabic speakers are more transnational in their media. The author argues that hybrid television cultures of the sort found among Arabic speakers in Europe enhance, rather than detract from, the culture of civic life in Europe.
