Sport, migration and integration in Denmark: local political responses and policies in Copenhagen

ABSTRACT

Denmark in recent years has seen a significant increase in immigration. The topic has become a major political issue, due mainly to the rise of far-right political parties that advocate not only for a more restrictive immigration policy, but also for an assimilation strategy for those migrants currently resident in the country. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), the aim of this article is to analyse the role of sport policy in Copenhagen as an instrument for the social integration of migrants between 2010 and 2018. This paper focuses on female immigrants and women-only swimming, exploring the impact on policy of the interactions between national, municipal and sports club policy actors. The main findings of the research are: a) sport was identified in Copenhagen as an important vehicle for the inclusion of recent migrants into communal associationalist life and their introduction to Danish societal values and norms; b) the Municipality of Copenhagen was granted by central government considerable autonomy in interpreting their responsibilities and collaborated closely with sports clubs in the design and delivery of sports programmes related to immigrants; c) two competing advocacy coalitions were identified, one favouring inclusion through assimilation and the other integration through multiculturalism; d) the assimilationist coalition was composed of centre-right and far-right political parties. As these parties controlled the municipal sport department, it was the sports clubs that pursued a multicultural policy; and e) the issue of gender-segregated swimming was a focal issue for disputes over approaches to integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• Danish sport policy
• Associationalism
• integration
• social partnerships

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my former PhD supervisor, Emeritus Professor Barrie Houlihan, for his continuous support and guidance. I would also like to thank the interviewees for their time, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. Finally, thanks are due to my family for their great support during the writing of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Ethics approval was obtained in January 2017 (Reference Number: SSEHS-2121) by the Loughborough University Ethics Approval Sub-Committee.

2. The municipal project ISA (Sport and Togetherness) aims to the introduction of youth and children who are not members of a sports club to the associational life through the organisation of sport and social activities at the local school after school time.