Soccer and integrating Europe’s Muslim minorities: the good, and bad and the ugly

Abstract

Drawing from recent debates about Muslim immigrants’ lack of integration into European societies, the current article advances a main argument regarding the nexus between soccer and Muslim immigrants’ integration within their host European societies by reviewing dominant theoretical models and focusing on elite European male Muslim soccer players. Considering the growing recent debate about the role of Muslim immigrants in their European societies, soccer has the potential to assist European countries to increase Muslims’ integration level. Elite Muslim soccer players are among the most influential immigrants in European societies. Muslim soccer players could contribute to increase understanding and community unity between different social groups within European societies as many of them prove that identity hyphenation and combining ethnicity and European nationality is possible for Muslim immigrants. Soccer could give more confidence to the generation of young Muslims about being accepted by European majorities.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Prof. Linda Good of Michigan State University for her insightful comments on an earlier version of this research. Also, the author wishes to acknowledge Prof. Ricard Soto of University of Barcelona for his for comments on earlier drafts and enthusiasm about intentions for this article.