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Abstract
The role of sport consumption, as opposed to sport participation, is often overlooked in debates around sport and social inclusion, despite evidence supporting the importance of sports fandom in social connectivity. This paper explores the ‘inconspicuous beginning’ of a move to develop a refugee supporters club at a professional football club in the UK. Theoretically linking the notion of belonging with Zygmunt Bauman’s conceptualisation of society as one dominated by consumerism it questions dominant discourses of football fandom, exploring the experiences of a small group of women and men who are refugees or seeking asylum in Sheffield, England. It concludes by questioning whether, as part of the social inclusion agenda, professional football clubs should be more cognisant of the possibilities for and their potentially interventionist role in developing a sense of belonging for forced migrants through the communal act of football fandom.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 All participants have been given pseudonyms for the purpose of this paper.
2 The term ‘forced migrant’ is used here due to its currency in contemporary academic discourse. It is however a somewhat dehumanising label and thus reinforces the ‘flawed’ status of such actors. The author’s preferred terminology is ‘women and men who are refugees or are seeking asylum/sanctuary’.
3 It is important to note, though, that it does so from the perspective of growing a ‘programme of integration’ from the grassroots up—the programme described here emerging as it did from the participatory action research approach of the original project (see Stone 2013, 2018). It recognised that integration may involve (rather than insist upon) some level of assimilation but in negotiation with actors’ desires to maintain, and not at the expense of, potentially contradictory ways of being or performing their football identities learned from socialising processes attached to other cultural milieus prior to arrival in the UK.
4 FARE is an umbrella organisation that was formed to help provide a united voice for its members, including fan groups, NGOs and grassroots sports clubs across Europe, in challenging racism and discrimination in football. Apart from reference in 2011 to the case of a refugee being refused the right to play football in Italy there is no mention of football related work aimed at forced migrants other than an annual news story from 2011 onwards relating to International Refugee Day.
5 This was followed by counter claims of ‘Refugees not Welcome’ as popular cultural spaces became ‘arenas of struggle’ for differing political perspectives (see ultras-tifo (Citation2015) for positive and negative examples from football stadia across Europe).
6 For example: NK Zagreb 41 in Croatia is a fan formed football club founded in association with refugees and migrants who play for and support the new club; AC Omonia Nicosia in Cyprus offered 150 tickets to disadvantaged citizens, migrants and refugees to attend matches during the 2017/2018 season; French football club U.S. Hardricourt has been providing opportunities for refugees to play regularly and attend home matches; and the subject of this paper, the Football Supporting Refugees project in England organised by Football Unites Racism Divides (FURD).
7 Most recently referred to as ‘legacy fans’ by CEOs of those clubs involved with the recently failed attempt to form a European Super League (ESL) which tried to create a product for the financial security of those involved by purposely targeting ‘global football fans’ and contrasting them to the ‘local’ fans that attend matches regularly and on which the majority of professional football clubs rely.
8 The group of forced migrants on which this research is based included former refugees now with UK citizenship, refugees who had been in the country for a number of years with access to the labour market and individuals seeking asylum whose economic situation was limited to the minimal support provided by the state. Whilst it is true that once leave to remain has been granted forced migrants have the capacity to become more economically active (legally being allowed to utilise their employability skills and employment experience prior to displacement), they face significant disadvantage within the labour market for numerous compounding reasons that keep them below the poverty line (Allsopp, Sigona, and Phillimore Citation2014). Meanwhile asylum seekers are enforced simultaneously into positions of dependency and poverty by prevailing migration policies and structures (Mayblin Citation2020). Likewise, changes to the structures of football have led to the exclusion of low-income groups from attending matches in the UK regularly where previously such a pastime was far more financially accessible (Brown Citation1988; Hopcraft, Citation2013[1968]).
9 For example, the annual Kick It Out week of action sees football clubs providing free tickets to relatively large numbers of people from ethnically diverse backgrounds as part of their commitment to social inclusion of ethnic minorities. Arguably this fails to challenge the ‘whiteness’ of football stadia and in fact reinforces cultural imperialist critiques of such engineered forms of supposed social inclusion.
10 This included two key interviews conducted with the support of an interpreter.
11 Three semi-structured group interviews were conducted with volunteer supporters who were asked to invite others with whom they regularly engage in discussion about the football club and/or are part of their match day experience.
12 It should be noted that I had known Hami for approximately two months at this point and while this exchange is provided as evidence, the iterative and interpretive nature of ethnographic fieldwork is such that it is further informed by my reflections on numerous conversations between us as well as between myself and Sarah. Whilst I have no fieldnotes or recollection of being hugged myself by Hami during the project, over the course of its nine-month duration, both of us became more comfortable within each other’s physical space. Due to my initial role of distributing the tickets and extending invitations to participants I have reflected that my role was perceived as a benefactor and thus always slightly apart from the group—a ‘contingent insider’ based on relative power differentials.
13 Although there are strong connectivities within the support networks for asylum seekers and refugees throughout the city, individuals operate across and within their own friendship groups and culturally specific communities, defined by national origin, age, gender and, over time, work and leisure practices.
14 In Scotland, Motherwell FC recognised financial hardship of many fans wanting to attend matches in a hinterland high in unemployment and responded by launching a scheme to provide free season tickets to the unemployed and low-income families in the local area to the club (Motherwell Football Club, Citation2021).