Adjusting to the Receiving Country Outside the Sport Environment: A Composite Vignette of Canadian Immigrant Amateur Elite Athlete Acculturation

Abstract

This qualitative project is focused on the challenges that newcomer athletes revealed when they considered their earliest encounters with a receiving culture during general daily life. Conversational interviews with 24 national and international amateur newcomer athletes were subjected to interpretive thematic analysis and developed into a composite vignette. This vignette unearths three themes revealing hope (theme: opportunities abound); uncertainty and fear (theme: weighing the risks for the journey ahead); and anger, humiliation, and hardening (theme: public stonings). Understanding the fluidities within the vignette will permit practitioners to explore the uncertainties of acculturation and find entry points to support athlete acculturation.

Notes

1 The term settler refers to an athlete who migrates to a new region or country with the intent of establishing permanent residence there. This term is based on Maguire's (1996) typology of athletes' motives for migrating.