Inclusive sport or institutional discrimination? New FIFA regulations, organized football and migrant youth in Italy

Abstract

Over the last decade, the international governing body of association football, FIFA, has introduced new regulations for the registration of young players. The regulations are aimed at ‘protecting minors’ at being trafficked from developing countries to clubs based in the majority of cases in Europe. While strengthening control on the status of players as young as ten, the FIFA norms and their intersection with national and European norms have laid the legal basis for forms of institutional discrimination meted out to youth of immigrant background living in Europe. This paper emerges from a study on youth of immigrant background’s participation in Italian football. It uses the theoretical framework of Agamben’s analysis of Western democracies’ citizenship crisis to highlight the contradictions implicit in the Italian FA’s implementation of FIFA regulations in a scenario permeated by nationalistic values, which create different levels of participation according to the legal status of young people.

Notes

1. Messi travelled for a trial with Barcelona FC in September 2000, but was officially signed to the club in March 2001 (Hunter 2012).

2. The scholarship programme is managed by CIES (International Centre for Sports Studies), which is an independent study centre based in Neuchatel, Switzerland, www.cies.ch.

3. None of research participants had entered the country as an accompanied minor, as the main focus of the study was on youth that were either born in Italy or had migrated early in their childhood. Generally, unaccompanied minor migrants are aged between 16 and 17 (FRONTEX, Unaccompanied Minors in the Migration Process 2010).

4. This is the first step of the Italian youth football system which is organized as follows: Piccoli amici (5–8); Pulcini (8–10); Esordienti (10–12); Giovanissimi (12–14); Allievi (14–16); Juniores (16–18).

5. Gioco anch’io (I am playing too). Accessed October 24, 2015. http://www.sportallarovescia.it/sar5/campagne/gioco-anchio-15/748-campagna-gioco-anch-io-2-0-per-la-cittadinanza-nello-sport

6. FIFA Circular no. 1190, May 20, 2009, ‘Revised Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players – Protection of minors’.

7. Foot Solidaire, International Association for the Protection of Young Players, www.footsolidaire.org/.

8. FIGC, C.U. 4, 23 July 2015.

9. FIGC Abruzzo. Accessed 20 November 2015. http://www.figcabruzzo.it/?p=65

10. FIGC Toscana, Accessed 23 December 2015. http://www.firenzeovest.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/c.u.-5-260,815.pdf

11. Between 1 January and 24 June 2015, almost 6000 children entered Italy rescued from the sea (14% of the total), and 3830 are unaccompanied. Save the Children, 25 June 2015.

12. ‘Statelessness in Europe’, UNHRC. Accessed 27 December 2015. http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4e12db4a6.html

13. Over the last few years, both the National Olympic Committee and the Italian Football Association have promoted temporary communication initiatives that stress the link between ‘integration’ (meaning essentially the integration of immigrants) and ‘sport’ (www.fratellidisport.it).

14. On 25 June 2015, the day after Italy went out of the World Cup, the daily Il Giornale had the following title on its front page: ‘Italy’s failure’, with a picture of Balotelli lying on the pitch with his hands covering his face. At page 26 of the newspaper, the section dedicated to the World Cup took the relation between Balotelli and the ‘national demise’ to another level, adding a textual, explicit meaning to the visual implications of the front-page picture. It reads: ‘Italy’s failure. Balotelli’s betrayal’.

15. EUROSTAT, Asylum statistics, April 2016. Accessed April 17, 2016. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Asylum_statistics

16. DFB (German Football Association). Accessed February 13, 2016. https://kampagne.dfb.de