Practices of German voluntary sports clubs to include refugees

Abstract

In view of the current migratory movement of refugees to Europe, voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) are often regarded as important drivers in ensuring refugees’ participation in social life. As interest organisations, VSCs produce their services in order to satisfy their members’ interests. This study analyses the practices that VSCs have developed in order to make sports services accessible to refugees. In this study, 37 German VSCs were selected and analysed indepth using a qualitative research approach. The findings reveal that VSCs often develop unconventional practices to include refugees beyond the established routines of the club work and adopted diverse practices: some VSCs have built up cooperation with other organisations to provide sport services in refugee accommodations. Some club practices consist in establishing so-called ‘refugee training groups’ which operate separately from other training groups. Finally, there are VSCs that have enabled refugees to participate in regular training groups.

Keywords:

• Refugees
• social inclusion
• German voluntary sports clubs
• inclusive practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Different studies about refugee aid of VSCs and integration of refugees were realised at different German

universities Chemnitz, Berlin, Dortmund.

2 However, it should be noted that in the three studies not necessarily the same criteria were used when selecting

the cases.