‘If it weren’t for rugby I’d be in prison now’: Pacific Islanders, rugby and the production of natural spaces

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the positive role of sport in building social cohesion and the accrual of social and cultural capital for many young Pasifika men. In the process, we also critique the disciplinary discourse, underpinned by bio-racism and commodification, which is enacted on the bodies of Pacific Island men in the context of post-colonial, neoliberal, Australia. This results in over-representation in the rugby codes, manual labour, the security industry, and in prison. Of specific interest to this paper are the ways in which certain spaces, and the means to occupy them, become naturalised. This naturalisation serves to obscure the actual regulatory, and at times exploitative, function of sports; instead positing them as exemplars of individualism and self-governance. In positioning neoliberalism as the reengineering, rather than simply the deregulation, of the state, sports such as rugby enact considerable disciplinary power over the bodies of a minority ethnicity. We refer to this diversion from conventional working class employment opportunities as ‘sportfare’. Qualitative data for this paper has been drawn from several independent studies engaging with Pasifika communities in Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• disciplinary logic
• Pacific Islanders/Pasifika
• sportfare

It’s a legit way, where I used to – every weekend was just a brawl, and I’m thinking yeah, I love to fight but then I got into the rugby. So get your frustrations or whatever else, get your communication out here and we’ll do it here [on the field] rather than in the streets. Seriously, if it weren’t for rugby I’d be in prison now.

The quote above is from a young Samoan man living in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. It is indicative of the familiar story of redemption and reformation that resonates with the popular common-sense that sport is an effective intervention or solution to problematic behaviour particularly of young people who might be considered ‘at risk’ (Hartmann 2001, 2012; Coakley 2011). Indeed for this young man, and many more like him, sport (in this case rugby) has been a vehicle to achieve some form of social mobility and/or to demonstrate a capacity to embody desired traits and characteristics valued by the broader society.

This paper considers the experiences of Pasifika men in Australia and how rugby simultaneously enables them to create spaces for culturally appropriate masculinities and disciplines them to the ethnocised subjectivities demanded in neoliberal Australia. As sites for the over-representation of Pasifika men in Australia, there are certain resonances between rugby and prison, namely both acts on bodies; as a disciplining space at the level of individual experience, and a representational space at the level of ethno–racialised minority. In making sense of how both rugby and prison are constituted to become ‘natural’ spaces for the bodies of Pasifika, we understand both institutions being responsible for managing precarity and producing disciplined citizens ‘according to neoliberal logics’ (Gershon and Alexy 2011, 799).

In the context of this paper, the term Pasifika or Pacific Islanders refers to a pan Pacific diaspora whose ethnic background includes New Zealand Maori, Independent Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Fiji, and Niue. We are cognisant of the fact that such terminology can conflate and essentialise enormously diverse cultural practice and identity and runs the risk of oversimplifying the varied and complex migratory pathways, experiences, and histories of our participants and their broader communities. Collectivising migrant identities in this way is therefore both problematic, in that it can produce stereotypes, and important, as such communities have real effects and provide support, resources, and solidarity. The term Polynesian is utilised in this paper as either reflecting its use in Australian census data or in situations when our respondents used Polynesian to describe themselves.

Positioning the Pasifika body in the context of post-colonial Australia we utilise Hilgers (2013) analysis of how neoliberalism is implemented and embodied through institutions, policies and dispositions to examine the logic that shapes the choices and actions of young Pasifika men. We argue that, in order to deconstruct the racialised logic that problematises minority ethnicity, the seemingly ‘positive’ spaces such as sport are important sites to assist in this task. Hartmann (2012, 1018) argues that the ‘race-based study of sport’ has the capacity to contribute ‘to a more sophisticated understanding of the subtle and multi-vocal nature of racial formations in the contemporary neoliberal, post-colonial world’.

In the remainder of this paper, we briefly introduce Loic Wacquant’s understanding of neoliberalism and its relationship with various mechanisms of social control before explaining our methodology. Following this, we discuss the Australian ambivalence to Pasifika migration and the subsequent experiences of these migrants and examine the seamless relationship between sport and neoliberalism before explaining the various factors that contribute to the over-representation of Pasifika in rugby. In particular, we focus on rugby intervention programmes as a disciplining arm of the ethno–racialised nature of neoliberalism, thereafter developing the concept of ‘sportfare’ as an addition to Wacquant’s thesis on the state’s regulation and control of particular populations.

Neoliberalism and incarceration

Neoliberalism in Australia is characterised by the deregulation of the economy, liberalisation of trade and finance, and the privatisation of state assets and utilities; the dismantling of welfare and the promotion of market-based sociality valorising entrepreneurialism, self-sufficiency, and competition; and the enactment of illiberal forms of authoritarianism, cultural nationalism, and moral discipline (Walsh 2014, 281). A feature of all neoliberal states is that levels of inequality continually grow and can be linked to the intersecting ‘fault lines’ of ethnicity, gender, geographical location, educational attainment, and age (Wacquant 2014). A key element of neoliberalism is the belief in a meritocracy that is a ‘product of natural selection’ (Bourdieu 2010, 196). Hence inequalities, or indeed over-representations, are justified as the result of a ‘Neo-Darwinism’ that enacts a ‘racism of intelligence’ (Bourdieu 2010, 196).

Wacquant (2009a, 2012) insists that neoliberalism is not just the deregulation of the state but also the re-engineering of it. One of Wacquant’s key arguments to justify this position is the rampant rise in conviction and incarceration rates over the past thirty years. He describes the state as the ‘neoliberal Leviathan’ practicing ‘laissez faire and laissez passer at the top of the class structure’, yet the same state is ‘fiercely interventionist and authoritarian at the bottom when it comes to dealing with the destructive consequences of economic deregulation and the retraction of the social safety net for those at the lower end of the class and honour ladder’ (Wacquant 2012, 39). The bottom end operates through disciplined social policy (workfare), the diligent expansion of the penal system (prisonfare), and the trope of individual responsibility that acts as the cultural glue binding the components together.

Whilst Wacquant’s analysis focuses on America and Europe, Australia too has seen a similar ‘carceral inflation’ that draws disproportionally from various ethno/class segments of society. In Victoria, for example, after a historic low rate of 38 prisoners per 100,000 people in 1977, the imprisonment rate has shown a continual upward trend reaching 134 prisoners per 100,000 in 2014 (Victoria Government 2016).¹ Further, the proportion of privately owned prisons has expanded and prison populations undeniably exhibit an ethno/racialised profile. Indigenous Australians are grossly over-represented (fifteen times the imprisonment rate of the rest of the adult population and even higher for youth detainees).

In Wacquant’s research, both workfare and prisonfare are applied to the same, increasingly expanding, precariat inevitably produced as a result of the neoliberal agenda. In the context of our research with Pasifika men we posit a complementary programme of ‘social supervision’ where there is a ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between work and non-work (Bourdieu 2010, 198), namely sportfare. Adapting Wacquant’s (2009a, 291) analysis of workfare/prisonfare, ‘sportfare’ plays proxy to workfare and thus pairs the institutional logic of ‘public aid and incarceration as tools for managing’ certain ethno–racialised populations. Wacquant (2016, 1078) argues that to understand marginality we ‘must not fasten on vulnerable “groups” but on the institutional mechanisms that produce, reproduce and transform the networks of positions to which its supposed members are dispatched and attached’. Sportfare in this case refers to rugby programmes that serve as labour development, behavioural interventions, and educational pathways for the ethno/racialised minority such as Pasifika.

Methodology

This paper incorporates the results of three qualitative studies conducted with Pasifika men both Australian born and migrants to the country. In total approximately 80 men were interviewed between the ages of 18–60. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken to allow participants to tell their own stories. This narrative format is in keeping with Kaupapa Maori (see Smith 1997; Linda Smith in Denzin, Lincoln, and Smith 2008 with local adaptations for Pacific Islanders, Fa’a Pasifika (the Pacific Way)).

This methodology involves a responsibility by researchers in ‘describing knowledge, explaining and reporting it [that] must allow for backgrounds, multiple realities, processes and contextual protocols to be captured’ (Sanga 2004, 47). This paradigm was pioneered in New Zealand and has now been more widely adopted in the Pacific and certain Indigenous research contexts in Australia and Canada. It incorporates aspects of colonial legacies, the impact of social disadvantage and also accommodates linguistic and cultural associations that are widespread in this community. One author is Pacific Islander and the other two have embedded, long-term relationships with Pasifika communities in Australia outside their academic work. For non-Pasifika researchers in this paradigm such relationships are considered essential. Participants are described via self-identified ethnicity, age and where applicable, occupation.

The findings that we present in this paper are further supported by ethnographic field work in rugby clubs and rugby intervention programmes involving the police, State union, and community groups. A substantial policy and document analysis has been utilised to adequately understand the governing rhetoric shaping both rugby and such intervention programmes. Finally, an ongoing media analysis has been undertaken to gain an understanding of the dominant discourses relating to Pasifika in Australia. All of the research conducted that has informed this paper met with the ethical guidelines of the authors’ universities.

Migration and precarity

According to census data, less than 1% of the Australian population identify as being Polynesian, however, they make up one of the fastest growing (in relative terms) migrant groups. The actual number of Polynesians in Australia is undoubtedly higher than the census data suggests largely because many, having migrated from New Zealand, have identified as a ‘New Zealander’ on the census forms (Hamer 2007; George and Rodriguez 2009). Pacific Islanders are considered primarily as economic migrants and remittances from Pacific Islanders abroad are vital for the economies of their home nations (Singh 2005; Lee 2016). Generally speaking Pasifika mostly settle in outer suburban or regional areas, which are characterised by cheaper housing, poor infrastructure, higher crime², and enormous ethnic diversity. Often literally at the end of the line, these locations are often demonised in the press and have similarities with Wacquant’s (2014) analysis of the territorial stigmatisation of the banlieues of Paris and America’s urban ghettos.

Hamer (2014) traces the effects of various Australian immigration policies on Pacific Islanders’ rights and opportunities to enter Australia. As late as 1971 the consensus of the Federal government was that Pacific Islanders were ‘unsophisticated and would be quite unsuited to settlement in Australia’ (cited in Hamer 2014, 104).³ Whilst the Whitlam Labor Government removed the final vestiges of The Immigration Restriction Act (White Australia Policy) in 1973, concerns soon returned regarding the potential influx of Pacific Islanders into Australia, particularly through ‘back-door migration’ from New Zealand. The central concern of ‘back-door migration’ was the proportion of New Zealand migrants coming to Australia who were born in a third country, namely the Cook Islands, Niue, and especially Independent Samoa and Tonga. One of the major tenets for this concern was that increased migration of New Zealanders (particularly from Pacific Island backgrounds) would result in extra burden on the welfare system and also potentially create social unrest.

From the 1980s onward the Australian Government enacted several changes to the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement including: the requirement for travellers to carry passports (1981); the introduction of a six month waiting period for New Zealanders to become eligible for welfare (1986); creation of a special category visa for New Zealanders living in Australia (1994); an extension of the welfare waiting period to two years (2000); a requirement for all New Zealanders to apply for and be granted an Australian permanent visa in order to access all welfare payments (2001); and since 2001 at both State and Federal levels there has been a whittling away of New Zealanders’ rights of ‘access to tertiary student loans, public housing, disability services, disaster relief and so on’ (Hamer 2014, 107). Whilst these changes affect all New Zealanders migrating to Australia, Hamer (112) argues that they were particularly aimed at trying to ‘discourage Pacific Islanders and Maori from migrating’.

The key point here is that many Pasifika migrants to Australia are rendered precarious via the Federal government’s immigration stance. They are afforded the right to be in Australia but without the support structures, financial or otherwise, that create at least some short-term security. Gaining consistent employment can prove difficult especially if language ability, educational attainment, and racism (Vasta 2004), limits access to traditional employment areas such as the construction industry, hospitality, and security, all of which are highly exposed, and increasingly casualised, in a neoliberal marketplace. Despite these issues, the majority of Pasifika families have adults who work hard and try to help their kids get a foothold in the Australian dream.

The issues of migration to Australia are not only financial ones. Generational problems are also apparent and relevant to our research. The following quote is from a police officer (Maori-Australian male, 40) who worked on an intervention programme using rugby:

The biggest problem is these young kids trying to find an identity. Most of those that come over grow up on the island (home country). There they have a culture, a family (extended), and it’s all around them all the time. After that they might move to New Zealand and live in a suburb that is almost entirely Pacific Islanders – different islands and it’s not the same as home – but they still have a sense of who they are, of their culture and they know each other. In NZ there is rugby and there are gangs and these young fellas start developing an identity. But then they end up here in Australia in a place like X and there are 200 languages and they don’t have any idea what is going on and they need to find an identity so it’s not a surprise that they end up in a gang or playing sport because they don’t see any other option. See the biggest problem is that Oz (Australia) says: ‘be whatever or whoever you want’, but they arrive and they can’t see any options except rugby or a gang. For me the key is to try to rediscover their PI identity, which for most of them has been lost on the journey here.

The issue of identity is central here. Besnier (2015, 855) notes that the hardships of emigration are sustainable because of a cultural identity whereby one ‘sacrifices one’s own comfort and security’ in order to provide for family (both in Australia and the home island). Therefore older Pasifika are able to maintain a relatively stable identity through their labour whereas younger Pasifika are subject to far more complex and potentially confusing experiences, especially in the education system that encourages a more individualistic understanding of self. This is not to say that all Pasifika have these experiences. For example, a Tongan-Australian born in Australia may not suffer the same identity crisis, though they may be subject to the same stereotyping.

Cuthill and Scull (2011) focused on the causes of lower levels of higher education attainment by Pacific Islanders in Australia. Despite most parents having high expectations of their children’s educational performance, a range of issues frequently block the uptake to tertiary pathways. These include a lack of understanding of the Australian education system and curriculum; cultural differences within the school setting especially regarding discipline and the role of the parent versus school; parents having low English proficiency and working long hours.

Further the ‘lure of a professional sports career’ was a goal ‘encouraged and supported’ by parents in a way that extra curricula activities tended to take priority over academic tasks. As a result, some school teachers assume their Pacific Island students will be ‘talented in terms of arts and sports, but unlikely to succeed academically. Such negative stereotypes are seen to be self-reinforcing both within the community and among external groups’ (Cuthill and Scull 2011, 8).

It would appear that similar complex and interactive factors are leading to high incarceration rates of young men for relatively minor criminal offences. For example, Tongans and Samoans, who constitute less than 0.5% of the Australian population, have incarceration statistics (for men) of 441 per 100,000 and 419 per 100,000 respectively, well above the rate for the ‘mainstream’ population (196/100,000) (ABS 2015).⁴

In making sense of the over-representation of Pacific Islanders in criminal justice system Shepherd and Ilalio (2016, 117) note a range of acculturation stressors including ‘recurrent displacement, family and lifestyle disruptions, instability, isolation, cultural disconnection, fragmentation of extended support networks and cultural shock’. This is something that the Pasifika community is acutely aware of, as one of our informants suggests,

We work closely with the police in that the increasing crime is coming from a large population of – there’s a large increase of Polynesians as well as the prison system. We’ve got the highest ratio of nationalities in the prison system than (compared to) anywhere else. (Tongan male, 36)

The experiences with law enforcement are even worse in the juvenile population in what was described by one informant as a ‘browning of the court system’.

Sport and the neoliberal state

Previous research has identified sport as a very effective institution from which to promote neoliberal logic especially in relation to a variety of ‘at risk’ populations (often migrants or ethnic minorities). Barker-Ruchti et al. (2013) note the ways that healthism discourse works through sport and is embodied by second generation migrants whilst Fusco (2012) identifies how sport programmes for ‘at risk’ youth serve to embed a discourse of healthification and governmentality through a process of reprogramming. Hartmann’s (2012) extensive analysis of ‘Midnight basketball’ in the U.S. (a basketball programme particularly targeting ‘at risk’ African American youth) explains:

Cheap, innovative, privately based and carefully targeted – midnight basketball did not just parallel neoliberal ideologies and realities in the USA; it was a near perfect model of them, a template that was almost ideal-typical on all of the key dimensions that defined neoliberal social policy. (1015)

In the Australian context Walsh (2014, 295–296) argues that neoliberalism has direct effects on multiculturalism so that instead of ‘protection, recognition and cultivation’, minority ethnicities have been ‘constructed as strategic resources and national objects to be organised, governed and manipulated for market advantage’. Minority ethnicity as a strategic resource resonates with Hage’s (2000) observations regarding race and racism in Australia being tied to ideas of domesticity and breeding, hence literally the Pacific Islands become ‘breeding grounds’ for sports labour, and future national representatives (McDonald 2016). Indeed several of the rugby intervention programmes we looked at referred to themselves as ‘plantations’ for growing talent.

If neoliberalism in Australia, and its successful hijacking of multiculturalism, is enacted through institutions, policies and dispositions, then sport becomes a legitimate site for its enactment. In the Australian context sport is unequivocally utilised as the institution through which to deliver a range of policies aimed at achieving neoliberal dispositions in its participants. Not surprisingly sport has been heavily used to promote neoliberal versions of health, however, it has also been central to multicultural and national security policy, and has taken a place in both crime prevention and school retention. Whilst there is strong belief for sport’s capacity to effect change in/for individuals, the critical research into this space is more sceptical (see Northcote and Casimiro 2009; Coakley 2011; Hartmann 2012; Spaaij 2012; Kwauk 2016). Coakley (2011, 313) identifies that the sport ‘evangelists’ tend to operate sport intervention and development programmes based on a neoliberal ideology of individual responsibility where sport would ‘simultaneously control and inculcate discipline among “disadvantaged” and “at-risk” youths who lacked the attributes needed to obtain socially acceptable goals in mainstream institutional spheres’.

What we focus on next is the intersection of rugby and Pacific Islanders and how the ‘effects of neoliberal policies participate concretely in the structuring of the social world and lived experiences and exercise a real influence on the ways in which agents think and problematize their existence’ (Hilgers 2013, 77). The effects on dispositions can be seen through the way in which rugby becomes a ‘natural’ space for the bodies of Pasifika to achieve either social mobility (a job) or social servility (a disciplining agent).

Making sense of the over-representation of Pasifika sporting labour

The massive over-representation of Pasifika men in the professional rugby codes in Australia is undeniable. In 2014, 38% of all NRL players came from Polynesian backgrounds (Panapa and Phillips 2014) whilst in the same year in Super Rugby the numbers were closer to 30% (McDonald 2014). The professionalisation of rugby union and the fulltime professionalisation of rugby league have undoubtedly followed the market logic of deregulation changing the meaning of rugby as a social space from one that produced social and cultural capital to one that has the added dimension of economic capital. As such the rugby body has become a sought after commodity in a regional and global market.

Due to the popularity of both rugby codes and their enormous media presence (TV, digital, and print), Pasifika men may be one of the most highly visible ethnic minorities in Australia. Indeed the phenomenon of over-representation in rugby is not limited to Australia. Transnational migration of sporting labour from the Pacific Islands (including Australia and New Zealand) has created routes for Pacific bodies into the rugby markets of Japan (Besnier 2012), Europe (Horton 2012; Kanemasu and Molnar 2013), and the College football and NFL markets in the United States (Uperesa 2014).

Explanations of why there are so many Pasifika in professional rugby have generally relied on one or a combination of the following explanations, namely: genetic and biological determinism (the natural); cultural and historical significance of rugby to the Pacific Islands (Warrior identity); and the creation of development and labour market pathways (opportunity).

The idea of the ‘natural’ draws on the bio-racist discourse emanating from colonisation, which anchors the bodies of Pasifika in the realm of the physical (Hokowhitu 2003, 2004a, 2004b; Grainger 2009). The deterministic logic of the ‘natural’ also strips one of the highly valued character traits, such as leadership, decision-making, discipline, and work ethic, which are afforded to the white player. This determinism is not universal and there are examples of Pasifika players who are respected and admired for the aforementioned character traits. However, it is clearly apparent is that there is not even close to a commensurate translation of over-representation on the pitch into positions such as captain, coach, board members, and indeed media roles.

The pervasiveness of deterministic thinking on the Pasifika community (whether rugby (positive) or obesity (negative)) clearly has a hegemonic affect and actively shapes ideas about Self, both individually and collectively (McDonald, Belanji, and Derham 2012). For example, Rodriguez and George (2014) examine the effect that the so-called obesity gene has on Pasifika communities in Australia. These authors note that there is resistance to some ideas about health interventions that go against ideas of Pasifika cultures, whilst at the same time it contributes to a type of fatalism and acceptance of obesity as somehow inevitable. In a similar way, in the sporting context, the successful Pasifika athlete becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The self-fulfilling prophecy – that is the choices individuals and families make to reproduce the rugby athlete narrative – is particularly strong when backed by ideas regarding cultural destiny and historical significance (McDonald, Belanji, and Derham 2012). In the case of Pasifika, rugby fits neatly with the particular trope of ‘warrior’ masculinity, which is not only applied to but also enacted by Pacific Island men (Hokowhitu 2004a; Rodriguez, George, and McDonald 2015). Ross (2014, 1323) identifies how Pasifika focused and produced news media in New Zealand often falls into (re)producing Pasifika identities ‘circumscribed by structural forces and shaped by hegemonic ideas and narratives from the dominant space’. The point that Ross makes, and which agrees with much of our research in this area, is ‘the notion that ethnic identity is a personal choice or freely constructed performance overemphasises agency at the expense of’ the structural forces at play in the post-colonial context.

Grassroots rugby clubs in Australia, especially those based around Pasifika identities, also provide important opportunities for individuals to celebrate or express aspects of their Pacific Island culture. These include

speaking in one’s native language, having common family and kin relations, being connected to the same church groups, having role models whom one could aspire to emulate and learn from and enjoying other cultural events, such as traditional food and dancing. (McDonald and Rodriguez 2014, 244)

As opposed to more mainstream or elite levels, one doesn’t have to be good at rugby to belong. In these situations, the social and cultural capital of playing is more important than the physical capital of being able to play.

Lakisa, Adair, and Taylor (2014) examine the enormous increase in Pasifika players in the rugby league domain (NRL) and its associated underage competitions. His work centres on how family, faith, and culture shape the players’ engagement with the game. To some extent these collectivist and diasporic ways of-being counter or resist the ideological underpinning of neoliberal individualism. However, counter identities don’t always fit well within the broader neoliberal structure of professional sport and maybe either misunderstood or ignored by stakeholders, management, and coaches. So, whilst their bodies maybe valued, their ‘souls and personal welfare’ maybe often be ‘rendered worthless’ (Lakisa, Adair, and Taylor 2014, 359).

Previous work by McDonald (2014) and Kanemasu and Molnar (2013) has focused on talent identification pathways and programmes to develop Pacific Island boys into rugby products, and has also examined both the pervasive nature of the ‘natural’ discourse and the importance of rugby as a demonstration of cultural identity and masculinity. In this way, rugby has been constructed both by dominant culture and Pacific Island culture as a legitimate and ‘natural’ space where Pacific Island boys and men can exist.

The narrative of social mobility and the reductionist logic applied to minority ethnicity, coupled with larger economic and social precarity faced by Pacific Islanders results in rugby having a broader impact on this community. As one informant said ‘we’re not transitioning and migrating properly into Australia’, following which he posed that the solution, or demonstration of proper integration, was rugby.

You’d be hard struck now to walk pass a Polynesian youth between sort of 14 and 18, and say do you play rugby, and the large percentage will say yes, and if they say no, their brother plays, or their cousin plays, or they have some sort of affiliation with a rugby club. (Cook Island, male 36)

At a grassroots level the over-representation of Pacific Islanders becomes even more pronounced. For example, somewhere between 60 and 80% of all registered rugby players in Victoria have Pacific Island heritage resulting in, as with the court system, a ‘browning’ of rugby (Grainger 2008). Rugby has taken on a complimentary role with church for some Pacific Island communities.

So what that’s now creating is in the last twenty years where the churches were now the community leadership groups, it’s now the rugby teams that are now the community leader groups. Those rugby teams are now run by the people that were involved in those church groups earlier. (Samoan, male 34)

As indicated above, the relationship between rugby and Pasifika reaches from professional athletes all the way through to communities. Achievement in rugby is a source of pride for families and the broader diaspora.

Policing the self: building the neoliberal citizen

Playing rugby allows one to demonstrate valued forms of masculinity and can be a way of reconnecting with other aspects of Pasifika cultures (McDonald and Rodriguez 2014; Rodriguez, George, and McDonald 2015). The muscular Christian roots of sports like rugby are apparent in practice and styles of Pasifika especially as masculinity is related to a physical prowess demonstrated through notions of ‘social control, discipline and devotion’ (Presterudstuen and Schieder 2016, 216). From professional to grassroots levels, players draw crosses or write scripture references on their strapping, and collective prayer before and after matches are common. Interestingly prayers are less about winning and more about protection and safety. Drawing on a type of religious determinism, this type of faith does have the effect of removing some agency from the consequences (both positive and negative) of playing such a physical, high impact sport.

However, rugby does more than just reproduce the civilising effects of muscular Christianity. The original embodiment of muscular Christianity was a result of colonisation. Besnier (2014) notes that rugby has been appropriated by Pacific Islanders in the post-colonial context and this paper is dealing with Pasifika as migrants who have followed a diverse range of pathways and for whom rugby has a broad range of significance. Rugby is a legitimate space that affords levels of freedom and autonomy not necessarily found in other places in Australian society and nor in the frame of muscular Christianity. This is reinforced by young men’s own description of what rugby means to them. For example:

Like rugby was – like you’re free, you know, when you’re on the field. I started probably six years old and I’m still playing to this day and I’m 31 this year … It’s all about brothers – it’s like a gang and in a way it’s sort of – because I was very violent when I was younger – that’s how I sort of got into it because of that. Being with the boys, we were violent, and I was violent on the field. I was dirty, but now I've grown up I just – I’m free, I’m sort of – like it’s not for those reasons anymore. But I think that comes with age, it comes with growth and maturity. It’s sort of similar to fighting but it’s not, it’s a legit way, if you can put it that way. (Samoan male, 31)

Whilst rugby is embodied as a space of freedom it conversely becomes a space of restriction where one learns to control one’s ‘natural’ tendencies – including the notion of ‘innate’ violence (see e.g. Rodriguez and George (2014) regarding the ‘warrior gene’). The way that violent characteristics become naturalised was expressed as follows:

Yeah, we try and solve things with our hands rather than trying to talk our way out of things or try and settle things with conversation … . like if it’s not going too well, and then it gets heated, they’ll just settle it with a punch-on. (Samoan male, 27)

All these problems are happening because they have nothing else to do. They love going out there and cause trouble, going to the train stations and every night you hear on the news that someone got bashed up here or there and they were giving the description and, you know, find out its either Pacific Islander or so-and-so. So those are the areas we look at as a community and as community leaders and that, so that’s why we look at this to try and assist them, because a lot of Pacific Islander people, they are all related. (Samoan Male, 34)

As with other dualistic discourses regarding the split between mind and body, here too are enacted the anti-intellectual performance of self that reinforces such stereotypes. Nevertheless rugby is a bodily project of self-development where the logic of the field, both physical and social comes to structure action and discipline responses. Prison on the other hand is the space where external forces control such tendencies. Loving to fight becomes legitimate violence, and the gang becomes the team.

The characteristics of the Pasifika success in rugby that is physicality, violence, power, unpredictability, and risk taking, are arguably assumed to be the same characteristics that result in Pacific Islander incarceration. This positioning does not allow for understandings of complex Pasifika masculinities that are not exclusively drawn from the physical and include subtler and various expressions.⁵ It also does not make the association with the neoliberal state and its emphasis on incarcerating the poor and the marginalised at an accelerated rate.

Rugby is seen not just as a potential career but also more significantly as a vehicle for keeping young people out of trouble, with a range of intervention programmes based on rugby being administered by police, local government, and rugby organisations, throughout Australia. Such programmes are explained accordingly:

We’ve got a few councils (local government) and they want to bring rugby to the community because they’ve got some crime rates and they’ve identified it as Polynesians, you know, they are aligned to those crime rates. So they want to get rugby within their community, so we’ve got this program called backyard rugby, where it’s after school from like 4:30 to 6:00. They promote to all the kids in the street and say hey, come and play touch rugby. (Tongan male, 28)

Targeting end of the line stations as ‘hot-spots’ of Polynesian trouble, rugby was used, in keeping with the audit language of neoliberalism, to successfully reduce the crime rate in particular areas. These programmes are very low cost, but what becomes even more interesting in relation to intervention is the way that Pasifika community groups actively start to create their own intervention programmes at virtually zero cost other than to the community itself.

So one of those things we looked at is organising tournaments so that they can participate and they can – you know, keep them busy. Because if we don’t, then rather than come and play rugby, they go and hang out at the train stations and all this. (Tongan male, 36)

Nobody gets paid but we spend a lot of time doing a lot of fundraising. And we just applied for some funds to run our tournaments and we got declined, but we need a lot of money to try and organise tournaments. So we looked at our people, the Samoan community (for funding). (Samoan male, 33)

Self-funding and self-policing, these programmes are exemplars of neoliberal governance and they point directly to the ways in which rugby and crime become activated in logical opposition to one another.

A final example of the structural effects of rugby is the recent application of rugby programmes into the education system as noted below:

There is a school called Z Park Secondary College – down at X way – they’ve got a rugby component in their school now, which they’ve just started. X High School has got a rugby league component. So some of the schools are now realising well, how do we keep the kids in school? Well, we’re going to start getting a sport in. And X High School, for instance, have said you’ve got to have over an 80 per cent pass rate to play in the (rugby) program. So then they’re actually starting to study and a lot of these kids – for instance, we’ve got a kid who’s possibly going to get an Australian sevens contract within the year, and his academics were poor, really poor. You know, he’s been in X and they’ve said to him if you want to stay in this rugby program you’ve got to get over 80 per cent. So that pushed him – they gave him a bit of help with tutoring and now he’s up with the marks. So he’ll pass VCE (graduate from high school) at the end of this year hopefully, and he’ll get a sevens contract. (Cook Island male, 40)

An examination of some of these programmes clearly indicates an enormous over-representation of Pasifika students in their numbers, indeed the schools where these programmes are offered are in locations where there are larger Pasifika communities. There is little doubt that linking opportunities to play in relation to academic progress can have an effect on increasing attendance and academic attainment. Yet even in the example above, as with many others, the main goal is still the professional rugby contract. Indeed this demonstrates the way in which rugby presents opportunity and disciplines individuals and at the same time matches with the ‘learning styles’ of Pasifika (Hokowhitu 2004b; Fitzgerald 2013). Whilst these programmes have demonstrated success in keeping some students in school they operate as a form of ‘learnfare’ or, ‘pseudo-training programmes that offer few if any skills and job prospects’ (Wacquant 2009a, 59). Thus, whilst staying in school, one is precluded from those academic subjects of honour that carry weight into the tertiary sector.

Sportfare

Rugby, as enacted through the lens of intervention, operates as a form of what we term ‘sportfare’. Sportfare, as an amalgam of prisonfare, workfare, and learnfare, is in some ways an exemplary mechanism for the application and embodiment of disciplinary neoliberalism. Sportfare has the capacity to easily oscillate between these three positions and remain unnoticed or unproblematised because of the mostly positive and non-political manner with which it is regarded. Further, sportfare would appear to be particularly successful at the level of the embodiment as it receives little resistance from those who embody it. To put it another way ‘doing sport’ for certain ethno–racialised groups is naturalised in a way that the level of agency to engage in it is high.

At the level of disposition, there are few things that work on and through the body as much as sport. The rugby habitus and the embodied knowledge of how to play and respond to the game are produced, not via genetic programming, but rather through a long-term investment and trajectory into the game. Further, the logic of investment is based on the transformation of sport over the past fifty years, more generally, from an amateur and quasi-professional pastime to a multi-billion dollar global industry. The market-logic surrounding rugby has produced the conditions for the current state of play and the structuring power of the market aims to recolonise those spaces where labour is cheapest and plentiful. The body of Pasifika is perfectly packaged to satisfy the expectations and fantasies of a variety of neo-colonial and European markets.

Operating under the neoliberal umbrella, sports like rugby seek to not only entertain but attempt to actually solve and control all of the problems associated with the laissez faire attitudes at the top end of the social structure.⁶ The irony being that the precarious labour market that drives more Pasifika toward the elusive dream of professional sport simultaneously creates the conditions for dysfunction and marginality. In this way, rugby acts as both opportunity for social mobility and disciplining agent for social servility. Not surprisingly there is a ‘steep socioethnic selectivity’ (Wacquant 2010, 210) in relation to both rugby and penal trends. Thus the core components of neoliberalism, that is individualism and meritocracy, are so easily enacted through rugby. Playing rugby becomes the format through which to harness, or even curb, ones’ ‘natural’ capacities and instincts in a socially desirable way.

Rugby and intervention programmes operate as sportfare because surely the development of a body for rugby is indeed a form of labour which links to a precarious job market full of uncertainty and dead ends. This labour also obscures the exploitative nature of the rugby as it provides the rugby clubs with a product that requires little investment. The dominant logic of developing the body for sport is often firmly entrenched before migrating to Australia (Uperesa 2014; Kwauk 2016). Kwauk (2016) investigated sport for development (SFD) programmes in Samoa and notes the changes of attitude towards the relationship between sport and education, where sport becomes a ‘replacement to schooling’ (645). This change is premised on the belief that international sporting careers offer the same high economic returns and social mobility as those careers gained through successful completion of high school. Whilst the SFD programme does achieve several development goals including service to family and village, enhanced English language ability and ‘global mindedness’ the reality is that:

School outside for Samoan boys may allow a handful of young men to circumvent hegemonic structures of inequality, but it also further entrenches their marginalized bodies of colour in a neo-colonial, multi-billion dollar international sport industrial complex that capitalizes on and exploits their labour and aspirations. (Kwauk 2016, 656)

The dispositions and bodily investment for rugby often develop ‘off shore’ and, as demonstrated earlier, many of the intervention programmes are community driven and operate at zero cost. Indeed the Pasifika body becomes a relative cheap commodity compared with the cost of developing talent from other parts of the community.

Wacquant (2009, 113) contends that ‘social policy and penal policy have converged and fused’ exhibiting ‘the same behaviourist philosophy, the same notions of contract and personal responsibility, the same mechanisms of surveillance and record keeping, the same techniques of supervision’. Sportfare, in the case of Pasifika in Australia, certainly aligns with Wacquant’s argument. The dominant logic of behaviourism is present as are the disciplining functions of training, rules, codes of behaviour, and other of the purported ‘ethics of sport’. Finally, sportfare links undoubtedly to the elusive and precarious professional contract in an industry where injury is inevitable and careers are short. The possibility of success seems always to eclipse its probability (Besnier 2015). That most will never make it doesn’t alter the undeniable structural effects on entire communities as rugby serves to regulate the potential dysfunction of marginality. ‘If it weren’t for rugby I’d be in prison’ is a lived reality for many men we interviewed in their migration to Australia. The key point is that rugby and prison become either side of the same coin.

Conclusion

This paper has examined the role of rugby in the migratory experiences of Pasifika men to Australia. Utilising the theoretical work of Loic Wacquant, we contend that sports such as rugby are enacted on and by certain ethno–racialised people as part of the logic of the neoliberal state. In this way, rugby and prison are knitted together into a type of ‘cultural mesh’ and applied to the bodies of young Pasifika men. Developed from the concepts of workfare/prisonfare, sports like rugby operate as a form of sportfare. As such rugby becomes an institutional mechanism responsible for the maintenance of inequality and marginality. Sportfare poses even greater salience to the study of marginality because of its ability to be simultaneously institution, policy, and disposition

Applying a critical analysis to sport in this way will draw criticism from ‘sporting evangelists’. Rugby for our informants is, after all, a game that many enjoy playing and gain great pleasure from. It has the capacity to create solidarity within marginalised groups and holds a certain degree of cultural and historical significance for many of the communities we worked with. Further it has been a ‘meal ticket’ for some, and an effective diversion from trouble for others. Nevertheless if we are concerned about the deeper workings that reproduce inequality and contribute to the over-representation of particular groups of people in the penal system then it is justified that we should interrogate the logic of the seemingly ‘positive’ spaces as much as the ‘negative’ ones.

Across a range of national contexts, sportfare is enacted upon ‘at risk’ minority ethnic and migrant populations and in doing so establishes and naturalises the logic of neoliberalism literally into the flesh and bones of these populations. Sportfare becomes a neoliberal solution to the problems created by neoliberalism and therefore, in its current state, legitimises the naturalness of various social strata and systems of merit. In the case of Pasifika, the hegemonic logic of ‘natural’ selection and other neoliberal values reproduces concepts of racialisation that are then enacted at an embodied level through talent identification, coaching practices, and playing rugby.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their input and guidance in developing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 As at June 2014, Victoria had the third lowest rate of imprisonment (134.4 prisoners per 100,000 adults) in Australia after Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. In contrast, the Northern Territory had the highest rate of imprisonment (829.4 per 100,000 adults). This was substantially higher than all other states and territories. Western Australia’s rate of imprisonment (264.6 per 100,000 adults) was substantially higher than the national average (Victoria Government 2016).

2 In keeping with the league table approach to tracking everything from education to home prices the daily newspapers provide similar interactive ‘crime tracking’ by neighbourhood in Australian cities (see e.g. Butt and Houtson 2016).

3 In relation to the Australian government’s historic attitude to Pacific islanders, it should be noted that the term also included those from Melanesian islands of the Solomon Islanders many of whom were ‘blackbirded’ as indentured workers on the sugar cane plantations of Queensland.

4 As we discussed regarding census data the figures regarding the imprisonment of Pacific Islanders are undoubtedly higher as there are methodological issues around nationality and ethnicity statistics.

5 For more detailed exploration of the ontologies and complexities of the Warrior identity please see Hokowhitu (2003, 2004a), George and Rodriguez (2009) and Rodriguez (2009).

6 This is often referred to as corporate social responsibility and you’d be hard pressed to find a professional sport in Australia that didn’t operate programmes for some ‘at risk’ population.