An ethnographic study on media use and cultural articulation: The case of Moroccan migrants in Paris, France

The purpose of this study is to explicate the place and meaning of media in everyday consumption practices of Moroccan migrants in Paris. Drawing from postcolonial discourse and media studies, this research aims at understanding migrants' processes of cultural negotiations of multiple and overlapping discourses.;The data were collected using two methods (in-depth interviews and participant-observation). Over a two-month period (October-December 1994), twenty five migrants were interviewed in different locations in Paris. They were chosen using snow ball and opportunistic sampling methods. Three basic topics were introduced and discussed. These are (1) circumstances and context of migration, (2) migrants' social life and daily interactions, and (3) media encounters.;The dissertation is comprised of four separate yet interrelated chapters. Chapter one articulates how identity construction in Morocco intersects the legacy of colonialism. The concepts of "nomadism" and "cultural bifocality" render problematic the received view of migration as a movement between binary and fixed points in time and space. What used to be transient and temporary has become now permanent and durable.;Chapter two explicates research situations in terms of design and implementation. This chapter includes the problem of cultural translation and the interplay of different semiotic systems.;Chapter three presents migrants' accounts of their media use and everyday consumption practices. Nostalgia for the homeland, displacement, and estrangement in both cultural spaces (e.g., Morocco and France) emerge as central themes. They constitute the context of migrants' lived worlds.;Chapter four discusses how the use of satellite television and VCRs help migrants reproduce images of an imagined homeland. By doing so, they create a third culture that accentuates their presence and sense of belonging to multiple locations. Specifically, popular culture, as exemplified in rai music, presents elements of migrants powerful and silent insertion and assertion of difference with the host culture while maintaining a continuity with the cultures of their origin.