"Exodus: the movement of the people" -Bob Marley-

In the couple last decades immigration has become a serious subject on the political agenda of western countries. There are millions of emigrants worldwide, who seek new destinations for different reasons. Economic refugees who are the target group of this research, leave their home country, hoping for a better economic life elsewhere in a different world. Several research has been done about the topic immigration. Most research is done from the perspective of the immigrant who already completed the journey to his or her destination. This research focuses on the potential emigrant who still has to make the journey to his or her preferred destination. There are different methods for potential economic refugees, to gain information about a place they would like to emigrate to. With the help of different media channels, potential emigrants are able to consume western media content. This research focuses on the role of the western media content on the motivation to emigrate. To create data for this research, fifteen different potential economic refugees, who live in Istanbul (Turkey) and Tangier (Morocco) have been interviewed. Also a group discussion has been held in Tangier to create extra data. The results of this research are based on the analysis of the created field data. All interviews are held and analyzed in Arabic. During the interviews and the group discussion the researcher attempted to find connections between the media usage of the participant, and the motivation to emigrate. The results show that western media content has a limited role on the motivation to emigrate. The main motivation to emigrate is the contact that potential economic refugees have with people from the western world. Through the contact with western inhabitants (which is in real life in the form of family and friends who visit the target group), the target group consumes the western lifestyle. Western media content starts to play a role when the media content can confirm what the target group consumes in real life, from the network they have in western countries. An important note to the results of this research is that almost all the interviewed participants prefer the own Arabic media content above western media content. This research shows that regional media content has a much bigger impact on the life of the interviewed participant, then western media content. A remarkable finding is that it seems that the participants live in two media worlds, the western media world and the own (Arabic) media world. The cultural proximity has a big role in the consumption of media content, which means that future research on this subject should not focus on the role of traditional mass media which distributes western media content because of the small role it plays in the motivation to emigrate.