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01Consuming Media 10/4/07 11:17 am Page 73

Sweden, and when he lives here he wants to have access to both. The young woman
who described herself as ‘half Swedish, half Pakistani’ thought that since the image
that one gets of one’s own culture here is tainted by the Swedish perspective it is
important to get an image of one’s culture in which one recognizes oneself.
Pochi expresses a feeling of great ambivalence about her new life in Sweden. She
experiences the move from the ‘tropics to the Arctic’ as a great adventure and a great
shock. The new, foreign language and culture lead to an experience of alienation and
loss of one’s earlier life: ‘I feel “dead” but live on.’ Although she is an academic, she
has to return to the ‘nursery … to re-learn to read, write, speak and think’. The
Colombian newspapers she reads on the net in the library make her feel ‘less dead’.
Through her reading she returns to her old, mature, competent self. The information
that she gets from the Colombian newspapers is also used as a resource in her self-
assumed mission as ambassador for her own culture, for example by informing
people about Colombian artists.
Recognition is also an important reason for reading newspapers from ‘home’.
Anders and Carl, who moved comparatively recently, think that it is especially fun to
read about people they know. For Ingemar, it is not a question of people (after forty
years, few of those he knew are still there), but instead a question of practical
everyday information. If there is a winter market or an auction somewhere, it is good
to know when and where. If a bus has run into a ditch he wants to know where, so
he can see the place when he drives that road. For those like Ingemar who visit their
old district, the local newspaper is an instrument for finding a way into its current
concerns and maintaining a place within it.
The ambition to stay informed about what is happening ‘back home’ was also
found among most of the transnational migrants we interviewed, though the degree
of the commitment and engagement in ‘home’ was expressed with varying degrees of
fervour. On the other hand, the old country is not the only place outside Sweden that
is the object of migrants’ interest. It is striking that so many of them also read the
international press such as Time, Le Monde, Die Zeit and the International Herald
Tribune.
However, most of the migrants who were interviewed are not only oriented to the
transnational. They show a strong commitment, though in different ways, to their
lives here and now. They have learned, or are on the way to learning the new
language; they continue their education or plan to; they work and worry about
qualifying for the profession they had before they came here; they dig the soil on their
allotments; they are consumers of both commodities and public services; and they
use the Swedish media. For those who are learning the language, Swedish newspapers
have a double role as sources of information and educational material. Pochi and
Carlota have daily access to Swedish morning and evening papers in school and at
home, and their boyfriends help them when an article is too difficult. Celal subscribes
to Sweden’s largest morning paper and Pablo reads it in his workplace. Both also read
Metro, the free daily paper distributed in Stockholm’s underground stations. Pablo,
who only occasionally reads news from his old country, says that for many years he

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