Communities in movement: football and basketball in transcultural spaces

Abstract

This is an introduction to the special issue “Communities in Movement: Football and Basketball in Transcultural Spaces”. The articles focus on amateur basketball and football teams and leagues founded by Latin American migrants in the US and Brazil: Oaxacan basketball leagues in Los Angeles explored by Luis Escala Rabadán, Bolivian and Peruvian football leagues in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro investigated by Julia Haß and Stephanie Schütze, as well as Mexican and Latino football teams in New York studied by Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa. These articles explore the meaning of football and basketball in transcultural spaces, asking the following questions: How do migrants gain access to sports spaces in their places of arrival and how are these disputed? What impacts do they have on community building? How are they connected to work experiences and to other forms of social and cultural organization? How are different senses of belonging disputed in these spaces? How are they at the same time linked to processes of exclusion and discrimination?

Keywords:

• Communities in movement
• migrant teams
• football
• basketball
• transcultural spaces

The forms of basketball and football that are widespread in most Latin American countries today were introduced at the end of the nineteenth century.¹ From the beginning, they were influenced by migratory movements. By the early twentieth century, football clubs existed in most Latin American metropolises, many of them founded by European immigrants. Basketball teams were established in many places at the same time, although this sport never reached the prevalence and mass media diffusion that developed in North America.² Today both ball games are very popular and have become more and more organized and institutionalized in Latin America – at professional as well as amateur levels.

Recent anthropological research has shown that although they were imported from Europe and North America, sport cultures are dispersed and locally appropriated in in multiple ways (Kummels 2013; Ungruhe and Agergaard 2020). Sports are adapted to local settings through new rules, techniques, cultural and social significances, and then re-circulated to various regions around the world. Today we can observe diverse transculturalization processes of ball sports cultures that mainly result from current migration processes. There are versions of Latin American ball sports played in different parts of the world: for example, ‘Fútsal and Fútbol Society’, Brazilian versions of football played in smaller teams and on smaller fields; the ‘Oaxaca Basketball’³ – a barefoot-basketball version of the game, played by indigenous Mexican migrants; or ‘Ecuavóley’ – a version of volleyball played with a football among Ecuadorian and Andean migrants.

For migrants and transnational communities, sports mean a place to gather and a space for community encounters, where they can express feelings of belonging – a common origin to a country, a region or even a locality. Also, ball games are used for the social networking that makes life easier in the country of arrival, where migrants are the target of exclusion, illegalization, criminalization and discrimination in everyday life (Müller and Murillo 2014; Alonso Meneses and Escala Rabadán 2012; Ruszczyk and Yrizar Barbosa 2017). At the same time, this appropriation of space is linked to transcultural processes: Migrants are integrated into the culture of the host country through soccer and basketball – very popular sports in most places. At the same time, they change the local sports cultures through diverse styles of play, rules, media coverage, which they export from their places of origin. Meanwhile, new teams, leagues, styles and even previously non-existent sports are established in their communities of origin through return migration and close contact with migrant communities. By initiating new ball sports traditions, they can reconnect communities that are separated by migratory processes.

The articles in this special issue focus on amateur basketball and football teams and leagues founded by Latin American migrants in the US and Brazil: Oaxacan basketball leagues in Los Angeles explored by Luis Escala Rabadán, Bolivian and Peruvian football leagues in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro investigated by Julia Haß and Stephanie Schütze, as well as Mexican and Latino football teams in New York studied by Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa. These articles explore the meaning of football and basketball in transcultural spaces: How do migrants gain access to sports spaces in their places of arrival and how are these disputed? What impacts do they have on community building? How are they connected to work experiences and to other forms of social and cultural organization? How are different senses of belonging disputed in these spaces? How are they at the same time linked to processes of exclusion and discrimination?

By organizing amateur teams, tournaments and leagues, migrants claim sports infrastructure, not only in urban but also in communal settings. The appropriation of sports spaces can be empowering, but it also has the potential for conflict. Especially in public sports spaces, negotiations as well as conflicts can be observed between the different actors that participate in these spaces (Müller and Murillo 2014; Alonso Meneses and Escala Rabadán 2012). Access to sports infrastructure is important for migrants in the course of making the city or community of arrival ‘their place’. In his article in this special issue, Luis Escala highlights the importance that sports practices have for the conformation of public spaces for migrants, the consolidation of migrant communities as well as the reaffirmation of a collective identity and a sense of belonging. Guillermo Yrizar’s article points out that in Queens, New York, participating in football tournaments and amateur teams is pivotal for Mexican and Latino migrants as part of their weekend leisure time in the city’s public places and developing social networks of support for their social mobility despite barriers such as their legal immigration status. Furthermore, the article of Julia Haß and Stephanie Schütze shows how sport spaces have to be negotiated in different urban settings: On the one hand, sports are an important way for migrants to become familiar with the city and appropriate urban spaces; on the other hand, they have to play on badly maintained football fields at disadvantageous times.

All articles show that the practice of basketball and football is connected to other community building processes, ranging from the weekly social get-togethers of family, neighbours and friends that take place alongside sports events, to more formal encounters such as tournaments where communal festivities take place in a very organized way, and as the institutional formation of broader migrant organizations (e.g., hometown associations). Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa shows how the unexpected upward social mobility of the Arias family is connected to community networking through participation in local football tournaments alongside weekend picnics with their teammates in New York and its suburbs. In Luis Escala Rabadán’s article, basketball also constitutes a key mechanism that allows community gatherings of Oaxacan migrants in public parks in metropolitan Los Angeles. In the case of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Bolivian and Peruvian migrants organize their football tournaments around social encounters such as collective barbecues, selling regional food and drinking beer. Football tournaments also take place during community festivities, for example, the ‘Copa Perú’ that takes place on Peruvian Independence Day in Rio de Janeiro.

These articles also point out the connections between ball games and migratory work patterns: As Luis Escala highlights, the formation of migrant communities is often initiated by the insertion of migrants in specific labour niches. Owning a team means social status for them; playing on a team is a distraction and source of relaxation for employees after a long, hard workday. A similar situation can be observed in the textile industry in Sao Paulo and in the case of the Arias family in New York. Successful businesspeople gain social status and access to key resources through organizing football teams; a migrant entrepreneur’s success is reflected by ‘management’ of a football team or a football tournament. Bolivian football leagues in Sao Paulo are closely connected to work in the textile industry, as Julia Haß and Stephanie Schütze point out in their article. Owners of sewing workshops organize football teams, and their employees play on teams together. The Arias family, observed by Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa, has experienced upward mobility and inclusion through labour mobility; now it gains social status and community networking by managing local football teams in Queens.

Amateur ballgames organized by migrants create a sense of belonging either to a migratory community, to a place (a city, a park, a neighbourhood), to a country of arrival as well as to the region and country of origin. In Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and New York, families, friends and other paisanos (fellow home-towners or countrymen) gather on weekends or special occasions to watch the games. The ball games thereby become social events that promote this sense of belonging. This starts by sharing the same hometown of origin. In the case of Mexican migrants in Los Angeles, outlined by Luis Escala, common home-towners even connect with other migrants in Arizona and Colorado through basketball tournaments. In Sao Paulo, Bolivian as well as Peruvian migrants in Rio have founded leagues that are exclusively for their countrymen and women, but there are also leagues where they connect with migrants from other Spanish-speaking countries, such as Paraguay and Ecuador, and even with Brazilians. In New York, female football leagues and teams combine players from Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia, as Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa points out.

However, processes of identification are also accompanied by processes of exclusion. All of these articles deal with migrants who experience discrimination and exclusion in everyday life and are illegalized or disenfranchised in other ways by the migration policies of the destination countries. Guillermo Yrizar’s articles deals with illegalization due to migratory status. In the Latino migrant community in New York City and the metropolitan area, cultural capital like a soccer team neutralizes or outweighs the ubiquity of ‘migrant illegality’ to a certain extent. Luis Escala’s study reveals how sports activities such as the creation of multiple sports tournaments of Oaxacan migrants in California are interwoven with the need to face structural racism and create a dense social fabric. Finally, Julia Haß and Stephanie Schütze point out how South American migrants have a marginalized access to sports infrastructure in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In this case, gender discrimination also plays a significant role, placing female football teams at a disadvantage in the appropriation of adequate spaces for sports.

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Although these specific forms of basketball and football have a more or less recent origin, ball games are universal; for example, they have existed in China since 6000 BC (Guttmann 2004), and in Mesoamerica since 1500 BC

2 Although football is generally much more widespread in Latin America, basketball is more popular in some places, for example, in regions of Mexico (Oaxaca and the Sierra Tarahumara in Chihuahua) and in Puerto Rico.

3 Very well-known ‘Oaxaca Basketball’ teams include the ‘Niños Triquis’ and the ‘Gigantes de la Montaña’.