Community sport development events, social capital and social mobility: a case study of Premier League Kicks and young black and minoritized ethnic males in England

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effectiveness of ‘Premier League Kicks’—a football community outreach initiative—to produce and leverage social capital among young Black and minoritized ethnic males in England. The paper draws upon semi-structured interviews with Kicks participants and community coaches to analyze the social capital created through participation in the programme, in addition to constraints faced by participants in utilizing and leveraging their accumulated social capital to obtain a professional football career. Drawing upon Putnam’s conceptualization of bonding and bridging social capital and the associated concepts of linking and sporting capital, the analysis concludes that Premier League Kicks was effective for building bonding social capital, which can lead to greater individual empowerment and self-belief. However, opportunities for leveraging such capital for personal reward were limited to horizontal networks/mobility and, subsequently, converting this capital into other forms, such as bridging, linking and sporting capital, was highly regulated and exclusionary.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Campbell, Football, ethnicity and community; Campbell and Williams, ‘Can “the ghetto” take over the county?’.

2. Spaaij, ‘Building social and cultural capital among young people in disadvantaged communities’; ‘Changing people’s lives for the better? Social mobility through sport-based intervention programmes’.

3. Fletcher et al., ‘Problems at the boundary?’; Burdsey, British Asians and football; Kilvington, ‘Two decades and little change’; Kilvington and Price, ‘Tackling Social Media Abuse?’; Ratna et al., ‘Getting inside the wicket’.

4. Roderick et al., ‘The sociology of sports work, emotions and mental health’; Roderick and Schumacker, ‘The whole week comes down to the team sheet’.

5. Cashmore and Cleland, ‘Why aren’t there more black football managers?’; Kilvington, ‘Two decades and little change’.

6. Sports People’s Think Tank, ‘Ethnic minorities and coaching in elite level football in England’.

7. Bandyopadhyay, Why minorities play or don’t play soccer.

8. Collins, ‘From “sport for good” to “sport for sport’s sake”’.

9. Putnam, ‘Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital’; Bowling Alone.

10. Social Mobility Commission, ‘State of the nation, 2016‘.

11. Stevenson et al., The social mobility challenges faced by young Muslims; Hoskins and Barker, ‘Aspirations and young people’s constructions of their futures’.

12. Sorokin, Social mobility; Aldridge, ‘The facts about social mobility’.

13. Ibid.

14. Sorokin, Social mobility.

15. Ibid., 133–134.

16. Bell, Middle class families.

18. Spaaij, ‘Changing people’s lives for the better?’.

19. See for example, Becker, Human capital.

20. Bourdieu, Distinction.

21. Nicholson and Hoye, Social capital and sport, 3.

22. Putnam, Bowling alone, 19.

23. Ibid.

24. Hoskins and Barker, ‘Aspirations and young people’s constructions of their futures’’.

25. Putnam, Bowling alone.

26. Rowe, ‘Sporting capital’.

27. Putnam, Bowling alone, 22.

28. Rowe, ‘Sporting capital’.

29. Putnam, Bowling alone, 411.

30. Kilvington, ‘Two decades and little change’.

31. Agergaard and Sørensen, ‘The dream of social mobility’.

32. Woolcock, ‘The place of social capital in understanding social and economic outcomes’.

33. Portes and Landolt, ‘Social capital: promise and pitfalls of its role in development’.

34. Rowe, ‘Sporting capital’.

35. Ibid., 45.

36. Long et al., Understanding participation and non-participation among BME communities in Wales.

37. DeFilippis, ‘The myth of social capital in community development’, 801.

38. Paramio-Salcines et al., ‘Football and its communities’.

39. Taylor, ‘Giving something back’.

40. Parnell et al., ‘The pursuit of lifelong participation’.

41. Carrington et al., ‘The politics of “race” and sports policy in the United Kingdom’.

42. Ibid; Bingham et al., ‘Fit fans’.

43. Premier League Kicks, ‘Premier League Kicks’.

44. Department for Communities and Local Government, ‘The English Indices of Deprivation 2015‘.

45. See Fletcher, ‘Does he look like a Paki?’.

46. Department for Communities and Local Government, ‘The English Indices of Deprivation 2015‘.

47. Rowe, ‘Sporting Capital’.

48. Putnam, Bowling alone; Bowling alone.

49. Rowe, ‘Sporting capital’.

50. Putnam, Bowling alone; Rowe, ‘Sporting capital’.

51. Spaaij, ‘Building social and cultural capital among young people in disadvantaged communities’; ‘Changing people’s lives for the better?’.

52. Nicholson and Hoye, Sport and social capital; Collins, ‘From “sport for good” to “sport for sport’s sake”’; Rowe, ‘Sporting capital’.

53. Morgan, ‘Enhancing social mobility within marginalized youth’.

54. Portes and Landolt, ‘Social capital’, 542.

55. Rowe, ‘Sporting capital’.

56. Fletcher et al., ‘Problems at the boundary?’; Bradbury, ‘The under-representation and racialised experiences of minority coaches in high level coach education in professional football in England’; Bradbury et al., ‘The under-representation and experiences of elite level minority coaches in professional football in England, France and the Netherlands’.

57. Woolcock, ‘The place of social capital in understanding social and economic outcomes’.

58. Meir and Fletcher, ‘The transformative potential of using participatory community sport initiatives to promote social cohesion in divided community contexts’.

59. Spaaij, ‘Sport as a vehicle for social mobility and regulation of disadvantaged urban youth’, 262.

60. Bourdieu, Distinction.

61. Roderick and Schumacker, ‘The whole week comes down to the team sheet’.

62. Fletcher et al., Exploring the barriers to South Asian cricket players’ entry and progression in coaching; Fletcher et al. ‘Problems at the boundary?’; Bradbury, ‘The under-representation and racialised experiences of minority coaches in high level coach education in professional football in England’; Bradbury et al., ‘The under-representation and experiences of elite level minority coaches in professional football in England, France and the Netherlands’.

63. Bourdieu, Pascalian meditations, 214–215.