Media and the Receiving Country’s Language: The Integration of Nepalese Immigrants in Portugal

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Nepalese immigrant community living in Portugal and on how immigrants use different media—from receiving country, homeland and global sources—to preserve the links with the home country in the process of integration into the new society. The study also analyses how the mainstream media of the country of settlement are used to learn its language (Portuguese). Theoretically, the research is based on the model of uses and gratifications of media (Katz and Blumler, The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives on gratification research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1974), on Berry’s model of acculturation strategies (Berry, J Soc Issues, 57(3):615–631, 2001) and on Bourdieu’s theory of power and practice (Bourdieu, In J. Thompson (Ed.), Language & symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), specifically in what concerns language as symbolic power. The methodology relied on 17 questionnaires and 8 in-depth interviews. The results of the study show the importance that media have at different periods of immigrants’ lives, depending on the level of integration into the receiving society. In forming a new identity where values and customs of different cultures mix together, in adjusting to a new place of living and in maintaining connections to familial and cultural past, immigrants find in media tools the help to overcome some of the key barriers inherent to the migration process, in particular, the learning of the new country’s language.