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

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.