2 research outputs found
On and off air: an ethnographic exploration of minority radio in Portugal
Taking a Media Anthropology’s approach to dynamics of mediated selfrepresentation
in migratory contexts, this thesis starts by mapping radio initiatives
produced by, for and/or with migrants in Portugal. To further explore dynamics of
support of initial settlement in the country, community-making, cultural reproduction,
and transnational connectivity - found both in the mapping stage and the minority
media literature (e.g. Kosnick, 2007; Rigoni & Saitta, 2012; Silverstone & Georgiou,
2005) - a case study was selected: the station awarded with the first bilingual license
in Portugal. The station in question caters largely to the British population presenting
themselves as “expats” and residing in the Algarve. The ethnographic strategy to
research it consisted of “following the radio” (Marcus, 1995) beyond the station and
into the events and establishments it announces on air, so as to relate production and
consumption realms. The leading research question asks how does locally produced
radio play into “expats” processes of management of cultural identity – and what are
the specificities of its role? Drawing on conceptualizations of lifestyle migration
(Benson & O’Reilly, 2009), production of locality (Appadurai 1996) and the public
sphere (Butsch, 2007; Calhoun & et al, 1992; Dahlgren, 2006), this thesis contributes
to valuing radio as a productive gateway to research migrants’ construction of
belonging, to inscribe a counterpoint in the field of minority media, and to debate
conceptualizations of migratory categories and flows.
Specifically, this thesis argues that the station fulfills similar roles to other
minority radio initiatives but in ways that are specific to the population being catered
to. Namely, unlike other minority stations, radio facilitates the process of transitioning
between categories along on a continuum linking tourists and migrants. It also reflects
and participates in strategies of reterritorialization that rest on functional and partial
modes of incorporation. While contributing to sustain a translocality (Appadurai,
1996) it indexes and fosters a stance of connection that is symbolically and materially
connected to the UK and other “neighborhoods” but is, simultaneously, oriented to
engaging with the Algarve as “home”. Yet, besides reifying a British cultural identity,
radio’s oral, repetitive and ephemeral discourse particularly trivializes the
reproduction of an ambivalent stance of connection with place that is shared by other
“expats”. This dynamic is related to migratory projects driven by social imaginaries
fostered by international media that stimulate the search for idealized ways of living,
which the radio associates with the Algarve. While recurrently localizing and
validating the narrative projecting an idealized “good life”, radio amplifies dynamics
among migrants that seem to reaffirm the migratory move as a good choice