Bridging and bonding social capital in sport—experiences of young women with an immigrant background

Abstract

Sport has long been considered by policy makers to contribute to a wide range of ideals associated with Putnam's notion of social capital, such as voluntarism, citizenship, democracy, community well-being, trust, inter-cultural knowledge and social networks. However, sport research that confirms such assumptions is scarce.

This article focuses on the social network dimension of social capital, and whether participation in sport leads to the accumulation of social capital for young women with an immigrant background. This article is based on interviews with 15 female athletes living in Norway, aged 16–25 years. The young women belong to the so-called second generation of immigrants. The article makes an analytical distinction between bridging social capital within sports clubs (the process of getting to know people who might be different from oneself, for example, people belonging to another ethnic group) and bonding social capital within sports clubs (activities where maintaining existing relationships with people who are similar to one's self is the goal). The findings indicate that young women with an immigrant background both bridge and bond social capital within sports clubs, though there seem to be some barriers. The sports clubs are found to be well-suited arenas for bridging social capital among immigrants from various ethnic minority backgrounds. However, the sports clubs in this study play a limited role as an arena for bridging social capital across social class and the immigrant–non-immigrant divide.

Keywords:

• Social capital
• Sport
• Immigrants
• Social networks
• Integration

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the young women in this study for their participation and trust. I would also like to thank Prof. Kari Fasting and Prof. Tordis Borchgrevink for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. As an example, NOC received 1.2 billion Norwegian kroner from the Government for 2004 (Kultur og kirkedepartementet, 2004).

2. The notion of social capital has found widespread currency; still the concept cannot be taken for granted because of its varied use and definition.

3. See Walseth and Fasting (2004) for a review of previous research on minority women and sport.

4. Due to a lack of space, I cannot go into this discussion here. For more details see Mohanty (1988), Amos and Parmar (1997), Carby (1997), Watson and Scraton (2001) and Ramazanoglu and Holland (2002).

5. In contrast there exist ethnic minority sport clubs for men in Norway.