A team like no ‘Other’: the racialized position of Insaka FC in Irish schoolboy football

Abstract

Sporting grounds have started to be recognized as fertile sites for the (re)definition of subjective and collective identities of youth of immigrant background. As a country of recent immigration and a rich sporting culture, Ireland is witnessing new forms of sport participation that critically challenge the status quo. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with an under-18 football team composed of teenagers of various immigrant backgrounds, mostly African, and run by African coaches, this article foregrounds their racialized position within the Dublin schoolboys leagues. In the Irish context, public discourses on immigration often conflate, in negative terms, African, Nigerian and asylum-seeker. This situation affects the way the team is perceived and the way the coaches run it. The team is arguably lived as a space of resistance against different forms of racism. A particular discourse on discipline is developed by the adults in charge, which conceals the necessity, for black youth, of learning to cope with racism. In spite of all that, football governing bodies downplay the problem of racism in the Irish game.

Notes

1. According to the 1996 National Census, the Dublin 15 postal district had a population of 53,221. Ten years later the number of registered residents had risen to 90,952, and non-Irish nationals accounted for almost 21% of all residents (the State average was 10.5% that year). According to the 2011 census, non-Irish nationals account for 23.5% of all residents, almost the double of the State average of 12%.

2. Insaka means ‘a place to gather’ in Bemba, one of the languages spoken in Zambia. The football team developed out of Insaka-Ireland, a cultural project started by Ken Mc Cue and Mutale Kampuni to promote ‘intangible heritage among the Youth of the African Diaspora’ (www.insakaireland.com).

3. As is the case with most adolescents of immigrant background living in Ireland, all the young players in my study were born abroad and taken to Ireland at some stage of their childhood (see Ni Laoire et al., Childhood and Migration in Europe, 2011; Darmody et al., The Changing Faces of Ireland. Exploring the Lives of Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Children, 2011).

4. The North Dublin Schoolboys League is one of the three schoolboys leagues operating in Dublin and surrounding areas. The other two are the Dublin & District Schoolboys League and the South Dublin Schoolboys League.

5. See Lalor, Roiste, and Devlin, Young People in Contemporary Ireland. Despite the fact that the term ‘soccer’ is widely used in Ireland, especially amongst Gaelics games fans, in this article I stick with the word ‘football’ to emphasize its international dimension, its global and globalizing scope (see Giulianotti, Football. A Sociology of the Global Game 1999; Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalization and Football, 2009). I never heard the participants in my study using the word ‘soccer’.

6. Back, Crabbe, and Salomon, The Changing Face of Football: Racism, Identity and Multiculture in the English Game; Bairner, Sport, Nationalism and Globalization; Bursdey, Race, Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues; Carrington, Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora; Hase, ‘Race in Soccer as a Global Sport’; Valeri, Black Italians. Atleti Neri in Maglia Azzurra.

7. Dyck, ‘Embodying Success: Identity and Performance in Children’s Sport’; Giardina, Sporting Pedagogies; Walseth, ‘Sport and Belonging’; Giles and Baker, ‘Culture, Colonialism and Competition: Youth Sport Culture in Canada’s North’; St. John, Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town; Thorpe, ‘“Have board will travel”: Global physical youth cultures and transnational mobility’.

8. Giardina and Donnelly, Youth Culture and Sport, 9.

9. See on this Lentin and McVeigh, After Optimism? Ireland, Racism and Globalisation; and Loyal, ‘Immigration’.

10. Jackson, Existential Anthropology, xxvi; italics in the original.

11. Ansari, ‘Introduction: Racialization and Sport’.

12. St. John, Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town, 302.

13. See for example, Duneier, Slim Table and Sidewalk; and Wacquant, Body and Soul.

14. Marcus, ‘The End(s) of Ethnography: Social/Cultural Anthropology’s Signature Form of Producing Knowledge Transition’, 4.

15. Sparkes, ‘Sport and Physical Education. Embracing New Forms of Representation’; Gratton and Jones, Research Methods for Sport Studies.

16. Grossman and O’Brien, Projecting Migration. Transcultural Documentary Practice, 2–3.

17. Fine, With the Boys. Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture; Dyck, ‘Home Field Advantage? Exploring the Social Construction of Children’s Sports’.

18. Giles and Baker, ‘Culture, Colonialism and Competition: Youth Sport Culture in Canada’s North’; Cuadros, ‘We Play Too. Latina Integration through Soccer in the “New South”’.

19. Sands, Sport Ethnography; Carrington, ‘What’s the footballer doing here?’; Holt and Sparks, ‘An Ethnographic Study of Cohesiveness in a College Soccer Team Over a Season’.

20. I was born in Switzerland to Italian parents and raised in Italy from the age of three.

21. A commemoration rally took place in Dublin in the days following Toyosi’s death, attended by about 2,000 people who marched ‘for a tolerant society, free of racism’. For the killing of Toyosi Shitta-bey two brothers, Paul (38) and Michael (23) Barry were charged with murder. Paul, who had a previous conviction for a racist attack committed in Dublin in 2001 (http://www.rte.i.e./news/2001/0518/stabbing.html [Accessed 10 October 2012]), died the day of the trial. Michael was later acquitted from all charges (http://www.independent.i.e./national-news/courts/man-acquitted-of-murdering-nigerian-teen-toyosi-shittabey-3324556.html [Accessed December 15, 2012]).

22. SARI is a not for profit organisation founded in 1997. Its motto is to work ‘for positive integration and inclusion through sport’ (www.sari.ie.).

23. Crang and Cook, Doing Ethnographies, 107.

24. In this regard, my fieldwork with young people resonates with that of Ragazzi in her study of immigrant children in France and Ireland (2009).

25. According to O’ Toole, between 1996 and 2006, the years of the ‘Celtic Tiger’, 597,000 new houses were built, while only 347,000 new households were formed. ‘This suggests that 250,000 houses were not built to meet housing needs but were either second homes or investment vehicles’ (2009: 112–13).

26. See for example, Fine, With the Boys; Anderson, ‘Bodying Forth a Room for Everybody: Inclusive Recreational Badminton in Copenhagen’; Simpson, ‘Cities as Playgrounds: Active Leisure for Children as a Human Right’; Giardina, Sporting Pedagogies; White, Silk, and Andrews, ‘The Little League World Series: Spectacle of Youthful Innocence or Spectre of the American New Right?’; Swanson, ‘Soccer Fields of Cultural [Re]Production: Creating “Good Boys” in Suburban America’.

27. Dyck, ‘Embodying Success: Identity and Performance in Children’s Sport’, 58.

28. In October 2011, the chief of the Blanchardstown Police Station paid visit to the team at the Insaka ‘squatted’ training pitch. In that occasion, he was handed a t-shirt of the UEFA ‘Respect’ campaign. Pictures of the ‘event’ were eventually published on the website of the club and on the Facebook page of the team (www.insakaireland.com [Accessed July 20, 2012]).

29. Malcolm, The Sage Dictionary of Sport Studies, 70.

30. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 109.

31. For example, Agamben, Homo Sacer. Il Potere Sovrano e La Nuda Vita; Mezzadra, Diritto di Fuga; Lentin and McVeigh, After Optimism? Ireland, Racism and Globalisation; Lentin, ‘“All I have to do is dream?” Re-Greening Irish Integrationism’.

32. Hall, Representation. Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices, 262.

33. During a digitally-recorded interview with me, a coach with a prominent Dublin youth football club, who is also a teacher in a secondary school, said: ‘Nigerians are generally troublesome. I would not say this in public, but in my experience black and troublesome, he will be Nigerian. Part of the problem is that black kids don’t understand the team ethics, they just play for themselves. They tend to be more athletic, physically fit, but they tend to be lazy. They don’t chase back for the ball’ (interview, March 2009).

34. Ibid., 263; italics in the original.

35. See for example, Lentin and McVeigh, After Optimism? Ireland, Racism and Globalisation; and Loyal, ‘Immigration’.

36. Quoted in Lentin and McVeigh, After Optimism? Ireland, Racism and Globalisation, 39. To counter views like those expressed by the Irish Times columnist, Lentin and McVeigh highlight that ‘according to the 2002 census, the largest foreign-born populations (who are not family members of returning Irish emigrants) came from English speaking countries, particularly England and Wales (182.624), Northern Ireland (49.928), the USA (21.541) and Scotland (15.963). The next largest population groups came from Germany and France. Nigerian-born accounted for 9.225’ (2006: 40). The 2011 census recorded 17.642 Nigerian nationals living in the Republic of Ireland. Nigeria is now the fifth largest immigrant group in the country after Poland (122.259), UK (112.259), Lithuania (36.683) and Latvia (20.593).

37. According to a study on racism in grassroots football conducted in the UK, all black players have experienced racial abuse (Long et al., Part of the Game? An examination of racism in grass roots football, 2000).

38. In April 2010, an Insaka league match was suspended after a fight that involved various players of both teams. Later the Insaka manager told the weekly Metro Eireann how everything started: ‘One of our players tackled one of their players, and he hit him and said ‘fucking blacks’’. ‘Slain Teen’s Former Team Condemns ‘Racist Abuse’’, Metro Eireann, April 2010.

39. Hylton, ‘Race’ and Sport. Critical Race Theory, 115.

40. ‘Mosney’ was originally built as a holiday centre and it functioned as one through the 1990s; in 2000, it was turned into an accommodation centre for asylum seekers.

41. See European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Racism, Ethnic Discrimination and Exclusion of Migrants and Minorities in Sport.

42. Ni Laoire et al., Childhood and Migration in Europe, 46.

43. See Perry, ‘White Means Never Having to Say that You Are Ethnic’.

44. Back, ‘Gendered Participation: Masculinity and Fieldwork in a South London Adolescent Community’, 213.

45. Duneier, Sidewalk, 12.

46. Evidence of racist abuse was presented at the trial (http://www.independent.i.e./national-news/courts/murder-victim-toyosi-15-believed-one-man-was-racist-before-fight-broke-out-3317141.html [Accessed December 20, 2012]).

47. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 177.

48. Ibid., 138.

49. See Dyck, ‘Anthropological Perspectives on Discipline’.

50. Biesta et al., ‘Does sport make a difference? An Exploration of the Impact of Sport on the Social Integration of Young People’; Lalor, Young People in Contemporary Ireland.

51. This ‘strategy’ of dealing with racial abuse in football mirrors the comment Clarence Seedorf, Dutch former International player of Suriname origin, made about racism during the last edition of the UEFA European Championship. Talking on BBC Match Of The Day on 8 June 2012 he said: ‘It’s never a good moment when we have these type of issues (racism). What should the players do? Ignore it. We should just tell them ‘you are not affecting me’ otherwise they will do it more. It’s a minority’.

52. Hylton, ‘Race’ and Sport. Critical Race Theory, 115.

53. Giulianotti, Sport. A Critical Sociology; Carrington, Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora; Bradbury, ‘Racism, Resistance and New Youth Inclusions’.

54. Giulianotti, Sport. A Critical Sociology, 53.

55. Andrews and Giardina, ‘Toward a Cultural Studies That Matters’, 396.

56. There are lesser opportunities to play competitively for adolescents aged 16 and over. For example, in the Dublin & District Schoolboys League there are seven leagues for the Under 13 (from F to Premier), six for the U14, five for the U15 and only three, respectively, for U16, U17 and U18 leagues, http://www.a2zsoccer.com/ResultsandFixtures/NDSL11Aside.aspx [Accessed July 3, 2012]. It is also the case that, according to research conducted in Ireland, teenage boys lose interest in their game as they go through the adolescent years (Connor Youth Sport in Ireland, 2003; Faye et al. 2006).

57. See for example, Bradbury, ‘Racism, Resistance and New Youth Inclusions’; Soeffner and Zifonun, Migranten Im Deutschen Vereinfussball; Williams, ‘Rangers Is a Black Club’. In recent years, the use of sport as a site of resistance by immigrant communities has gained attention from documentary filmmakers across Europe. See for example Castellani, Liberi Nantes Football Club; Lukacs and Müller. Africa 11.

58. In 2005, while playing for Messina against Inter in Italy’s Serie A, Ivorian defender Marco André Zoro interrupted the game taking the ball in his hands and asking the referee to act against the racist chants Inter supporters were directing at him. His unexpected reaction to racist chanting, and the support he received afterwards from media and general public, forced the Italian football authorities to take seriously the idea of suspending matches due to racist chanting – a means that, to this day, however, has been taken only once (http://farenet.org/default.asp?intPageID=7&intArticleID=2266 [accessed June 12, 2012]).

59. Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE) is a network of organizations from several European countries started in 1999 ‘to fight through football all forms of discrimination in football’ (www.farenet.org [Accessed March 4, 2012]). UEFA is the European governing body of football (http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/uefa/UEFAMedia/258797_DOWNLOAD.pdf [Accessed December 20, 2012]).

60. FAI, ‘Intercultural Football Plan’, http://www.fai.i.e./domestic-a-grassroots/intercultural-football-program.html (accessed July 10 2012).

61. Hassan and Mc Cue, ‘Football, Racism and the Irish’, 62.

62. See Hassan and Mc Cue, ‘Football, Racism and the Irish’. During the period 2007–2008, FAI reported five racist incidents (F.R.A. 2010). I personally contacted the FAI and FAI’s partner Show Racism the Red Card asking for more recent statistics, but such statistics (if they exist at all) are not yet available. As late as July 2012, SARI, a member of the Football Intercultural Advisory group which produced FAI Intercultural Plan, invited the FAI to finally publish the report of the 2007–2010 FAI Intercultural Plan, which should include figures for racist incidents and number of coaches, referees and administrators trained in ‘anti-racism’ (Personal email communication with SARI, 4 July 2012).

63. http://www.theredcard.i.e./sport_racism.php (accessed May 30, 2012).