Facilitating migrant youths’ inclusion into Swedish sport clubs in underserved areas

ABSTRACT

The Swedish sports movement has gained an increasingly profound role in addressing social issues. One such issue is migrant youths’ social inclusion in underserved areas, and the underlying assumption is that sports clubs fulfill an important function here. However, retaining migrant youths in organized sports in these areas is difficult, and sports clubs often struggle with the resources to satisfy social policies. This paper explored the practices of 12 experienced Swedish sports clubs to illuminate the strategies deployed to recruit and retain migrant youths in underserved areas. Sports clubs were conceptualized as local development-initiatives according to Rothman’s community work classification, and the results were analysed with Bronfenbrenner’s Person-Process-Context-Time framework. The results show that sports clubs are run by compassionate and locally embedded individuals, but that the representatives’ different forms of capital and sensitivity differentiate their success. Three processes are stressed as essential. Clubs need to establish robust relationships with migrant youths’ parents. Secondly, since clubs are contingent on driven, but strained, individuals, it is imperative to recruit and utilize (migrant) youth trainers. Finally, sports clubs must work in tandem with important institutions, such as the school. In summary, sports clubs must adopt creative strategies, and have resilience, time, and support. These findings indicate that enabling migrant youths’ inclusion into sports requires holistic solutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Integration
• migrants
• voluntary sport clubs
• Europe
• acculturation

Western governments have increasingly targeted sports clubs as prominent arenas for migrants’ ‘integration’ (Agergaard, 2018), and sports have been ascribed the capacity to promote health-related outcomes, expand networks, facilitate social cohesion and foster social bonds (Österlind and Wright 2014). The increasingly strong idea that sports should address social issues coincides with the welfare states’ gradual retreat, where civil society has increasingly been used to provide welfare (Sabbe 2019). In Sweden, civil society organizations are now important actors in migrants’ integration (Jönsson and Scaramuzzino 2022), and the sports movement has been adamant about pursuing such issues (Arnoldsson et al. 2019). As Ekholm (2017) notes, the Swedish sports movement is being ‘mobilized’ to carry out social work, often mixed up in complex collaborations.

The Swedish government has intensified the collaboration with the Swedish sports movement to address social issues during the last two decades (Bjärsholm and Norberg 2021), which demands further efforts from such actors, despite sports clubs’ voluntaristic nature. Most sports clubs struggle with sustaining their initiatives, and including migrant youths in their organization (Hertting and Karlefors 2021). This issue has been noted to be more profound in disadvantaged areas, where voluntary associations struggle more (MUCF, 2016). Since sports may promote social integration amongst diverse individuals and in deprived areas (Höglund and Bruhn 2022), failing to include migrant youths have several implications in the Swedish landscape, where ethnocultural- and spatial segregation is rapidly growing. These issues lead to the current study’s research questions: how do Swedish sports clubs in socioeconomically deprived areas enable migrant youths’ long-term participation? How do Swedish sports clubs cope with increasing expectations in their operative work?

This study emanates from a collaboration with the Swedish Sports Confederation (SSC), where 12 successful sports clubs were interviewed. These were conceptualized according to Rothman’s (1996) community work classification. Rothman’s classification serves as a heuristic device in form of a typology of community work, enabling an easier understanding of what sort of community work is being delivered, and the configurations within a given project. In this paper, sports clubs were conceptualized as locality development-initiatives; initiatives centred on collaboration on the grassroot-level that seeks to address a commonly experienced issue. The material was analysed with Bronfenbrenner’s Person-Process-Context-Time (PPCT) model. The PPCT-framework details the processes that occur between significant individuals and their environment and may help us understand interactions between and within sports clubs and individuals that are required to facilitate migrant youths’ sporting participation.

The paper proceeds as follows. First, sports clubs’ roles are sketched out in the context of (Swedish) social work according to Rothman’s community work classification. Secondly, the Swedish migration climate is briefly described and connected to the role of sports clubs. Thirdly, the PPCT-framework is explained. Fourth, the method and material are presented, including 12 interviews with club representatives. Finally, the data is analysed according to the PPCT-framework. The findings are discussed and connected to the community work field.

Conceptualizing sports in the context of Swedish social work

In this paper, I argue that the SSC, and a considerable amount of sports clubs under the SSC’s umbrella, are carrying out community work. Community work is a concept that often involves the public sector, civil society organizations, NGOs, private companies, and much more (Sjöberg and Turunen 2022). A central feature is that community work deviates from individual-centred social work, and instead addresses the issues where people live; issues like poverty, social exclusion, and inequity (Sjöberg and Turunen 2018).

One classification of community work is provided by Rothman (1996) including locality development, social planning, and social action, where the two former are interesting to this paper. Locality development, according to Sjöberg and Turunen (2018), considers enhanced and increased participation in the development of local areas. This includes creating networks, organizing activities, and collaborations between associations and authorities, all to meet the locals’ needs. In short, local development seeks to increase the resources available to facilitate integration into the local community (Sjöberg and Turunen 2018). Sjöberg and Turunen (2018) further describe how the involved actor takes on the role of an enabler; a key person who facilitates collaborations between important entities. Locality development is underpinned by the assumptions that organizations and individuals within a given community can unite around an issue they have in common, and work out a consensual solution (Berger and Berger 1985). Social planning is, instead, historically an expert-initiated activity, often carried out by governmental actors (Sjöberg and Turunen 2018). In this regard, the community work is not exclusively located in the local area itself but starts at the initial vantage point of planning for sustainable and fair communities. As Sjöberg and Turunen (2018) note, locals are an important part of social planning, but still contain elements at higher bureaucratic levels. The role of the involved actor is thus that of the ‘expert’.

The SSC is the governing body of Swedish sports. Governmental funding has increased over the last decades to enhance the sports movements’ ability to contribute towards social policy goals (Österlind and Wright 2014) and key assumptions have been that sports clubs are arenas that can induce social cohesion, foster democratic ideals and combat antisocial behaviour (Ekholm 2013). Importantly, the SSC does not themselves carry out the operative work – the sports clubs do. In this arrangement, the SSC is funded, and distributes the funding down to other subsections of the organizations (e.g. special sports federations), which then distribute funding to the sports clubs. The arrangement is contingent on sports clubs’ ability and willingness to carry out the community work, although somewhat framed by the SSC. Notably, most sports clubs avoid getting involved in delivering community work (Stenling and Fahlén 2016) and clubs often face issues when attempting to include underrepresented groups. The SSC regularly holds educational activities directed at sports clubs to make them more inclusive and sustainable; in the same vein, the SSC pro-actively attempts to arrange collaborations between sports clubs and external actors to ensure the sports clubs’ sustainability (Blomqvist Mickelsson, 2022; Stenling and Fahlén 2021). There is a natural link between that of external actors as collaborators and sports clubs’ sustainability. As shown elsewhere (Blomqvist Mickelsson, 2022), such collaborators can fund and alleviate some of the burdens of sports club’s when working with hard-to-reach populations. In turn, this allows sports clubs to make long-term commitments to include such populations, and make such efforts less difficult to maintain, as compared to when sports clubs run out of funding (e.g. Molin 2019).

Based on this arrangement, the SSC’s role is related to social planning; as ‘experts’ who offer community services (Rothman 1996). However, given the autonomy of sports clubs, and their local anchoring, it is primarily up to the sports clubs to shape the intervention. In this regard, they are local hubs that often seek to combat social issues within their area and must involve several actors to do so [anonymous, 2022]. As such, although the SSC mediates funding, education, and basic instructions, locality development takes place with sports clubs as the main sites. The collaborators involved are often the municipality (Ekholm and Holmlid 2020), housing services, refugee reception centres (Blomqvist Mickelsson, 2022), and the SSC themselves (Blomqvist Mickelsson, 2022) amongst others. In some sense, sports clubs become ‘area-based initiatives’, disguised under the community work umbrella (Grander, Roelofs, and Salonen 2022). One difference is that sports clubs are (mostly) stable structures, although limited in resources, and not experimental and short-lived initiatives which are otherwise characteristic of Nordic community work (Sjöberg and Turunen 2022). Given the large numbers of sporting members- and volunteers in Sweden, coupled with a funding structure, sports clubs have, at least in theory, the potential to be long-lasting structures. A brief parallel, and distinction, can here be made concerning youth work. In Sweden, besides being a marginalized type of social work, youth work is poorly defined but can be discerned within several domains. One of the clearest ways youth work is exerted in Sweden is through recreational centres (Forkby and Kiilakoski, 2014). Youth work commenced in the 1940s by establishing these recreational centres, often with municipality employees (Forkby 2014), and where sports were, and are, the most attended activities (Andersson, 2018). However, beginning in the 1970s, activities within these centres became de-centralized and transferred to the local communities’ associations. Forkby (2014) notes that, gradually, there was ‘ … a greater focus on civil society and NGOs taking responsibility for youth leisure activities … ’ (p. 57) and that contemporary political discourse does not concern itself overly much with youths’ leisure. One interpretation here is that local, voluntary, sports clubs have become the main sites of ‘youth work’.

Finally, it is worthwhile to mention that the increased funding and the expanding role of the Swedish sports movement have also made the government impose more monitoring, auditing and demands (Österlind 2016). As a civil society organization, the SSC has critiqued this development, but still made demands for further funding to keep on addressing societal issues (Stenling and Sam 2017). The results emanating from such contradictions is an increasing pressure on the sports clubs to carry out community work, along with a more evidence-based way of approaching the issue at hand. Such notions are evident in recent SSC reports, calling for more ‘evidence-based’ ways of sport delivery in these areas (Lindström and Blomqvist Mickelsson, 2022). The ‘evidence’ discourse has been present for a long time in the social work literature (Rosen 2003), in the sport for development literature (Coalter 2013), and has now found its way into local- and national sports federations. In short, Swedish sports clubs are expected to include ‘hard-to-reach’ populations, despite the excessive and unpaid work it might entail, and to do it in an evidence-based approach..

Migrant youth in socioeconomically deprived areas and sport in Sweden

Historically, Sweden has been a strong defender of human rights and inclusive migration policies. However, these ideas of exceptionalism have diminished in favour of strong right-wing forces and populist voices (Dahlstedt and Neergaard 2019). An increasingly assimilatory sentiment is prevalent, even permeating some social work practices (Elmersjö et al. 2020). Even more alarmingly is the altered urban landscape in Sweden. Crediting neoliberal forces, the urban landscape in Sweden is now distinctively divided by spatial, ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps. Grundström and Molina (2016) map out three significant shifts in Swedish history. Between 1930 and 1974, the state implemented the Folkhem model (‘the people’s home’) under the social democratic regime, which intended to ensure housing provision for all. Between 1974 and 2006, the model was deregulated, and increasing marketization and gradual abolition of housing subsidies occurred. From 2006 to present, liberal housing policies continue to flourish and spur marketization. New housing units are constructed, keeping the middle and higher classes in mind, while lower socioeconomic classes are faced with an increasing housing deficit.

The result of these developments is that the urban peripheries are characterized by poor infrastructure, social exclusion, stigmatization and that disadvantaged individuals are displaced to these areas (Dahlstedt and Ekholm 2019). In short, socioeconomically deprived areas at the fringe of urban cities become developmental downward spirals, where people of migrant backgrounds are grouped together in poor conditions that affect the outlook and prospects of their lives. Unsurprisingly, such situations are also a growing ground for frustration with the systemic inequities that impair migrant youths’ prospects, as evident in, for example, the 2013 riots in Husby (Schierup, Ålund and Kings, 2014). Notably, it is precisely within such areas that community work is leveraged (Al-Khamisi and Sjöberg 2018).

It is within this context that the Swedish government has placed more trust in the SSC and the sports clubs – however, researchers have been careful in their assessment of sport-based initiatives’ capacity to address issues in these areas. Research from Midnattsfotboll in such areas calls into question whether these initiatives address the intended goals (Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2022). One conclusion provided here is that the power of sports might, in general, be overestimated (Dahlstedt and Ekholm 2021). Other researchers have looked at Midnattsfotboll in a more positive light, arguing that such initiatives can promote social integration (Höglund and Bruhn 2022). Importantly, both SSC-based reports and scholarly articles have pointed to deficits in sustaining these initiatives. Molin (2019) reported that many sports clubs cease their initiatives when funding runs out and that acquiring further funding is exhausting. Ekholm and Holmlid (2020) analysed two sport-based initiatives and found that the organizations contained highly complex collaborations that sustained the initiatives; collaborations that require time, and resources and thus may not be the reality for most sports clubs. Similar results are found in Blomqvist Mickelsson (2022)and Hertting and Karlefors (2021), with the addition that many sports clubs fail to include migrant youths because of migrant youths’ unfamiliarity with the Swedish sport structure and its inherent bureaucracy and organization. In general, these findings reflect the international literature; migrants are consistently excluded from sports clubs (Nobis et al. 2021) and the main explanatory factor underlying migrants’ inclusion is how sports clubs approach migrants’ inclusion (Doidge, Keech, and Sandri 2020).

A realist-inspired PPCT model

This study takes inspiration from the literature on realist evaluation (Pawson and Tilley 1997) and uses the PPCT-model, derived from Bronfenbrenner (2005). The main contribution of Pawson and Tilley’s (1997) is their Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configuration. The paper will use this formula, but (re)interpret it through the PPCT model. Contextually, Pawson and Tilley (1997) refer to both the individual capacities, to the wider infrastructural settings in a program. Moreover, realist mechanisms have been described in several ways, and often ambiguously (see Lemire et al. 2020); in this paper, the PPCT-model distinguishes between context and individual factors, and utilizes the proximal process – the interaction between contexts and individuals – as the substitute for what realists refer to as ‘mechanisms’. By way of this reinterpretation, the paper attempts to circumvent the cave-at made by several researchers when they fail to specify what a mechanism is, and how this tends to overlap with contextual conditions (Lemire et al. 2020).

Bronfenbrenner conceptualizes the individual as nested within the micro-system (e.g. family context), meso-system (e.g. links between different micro-systems, such as parents and sports clubs), exo-system (media, political institutions), and the macro-system (societal blueprints, such as culture). This is the context, which is resembling to that of Pawson and Tilley’s understanding of context as well, minus the individual’s characteristics. A critical feature of Bronfenbrenner’s PPCT-framework was the elaboration of proximal processes. Proximal processes are interactions between the individual and her immediate surroundings that have developmental powers if cultivated correctly. This process is complex and varies “ … systematically as a joint function of the characteristics of the developing person (including genetic inheritance); of the environment – both immediate and more remote – in which the processes are taking place … “ (Bronfenbrenner 2005, 6). This is what this paper refers to as the mechanism, where a given individual interacts with or is affected by, a set of program components that ultimately have a casual effect. In sports, the interactions that occur between migrant youths and the coaches, peers, parents, and other individuals thus constitute a significant ground for developing a proximal process – both operationalized from participation-, and retention perspectives.

To understand how individuals interact with the milieu, Bronfenbrenner (2005) outlined three individual factors. According to DiSanti and Erickson (2021, 31): ‘The “person” forms an important unit in that they exist, interact, and potentially change their environment; they are part of the equation that works outwardly from the social actors and environmental characteristics most proximal to them’. The person’s characteristics comprise three categories, demand-factors, resource-factors, and force-factors. Demand-factor refers to the demographics of the person (ethnicity, age, sex, etc.); resource-factors refer to the available resources of a person, such as mental and emotional assets, or various types of capital such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital. Here, these capitals are understood in a Bourdieusian sense. Cultural capital is embodied by body- and mind, a competence accumulated over time. These are, from a cultural perspective, knowledge, behaviours, and norms that allow the individual to navigate a given society. Social capital is connected to group membership and social networks where the individual may advance her agenda or position by mobilizing the social capital available. Finally, symbolic capital, as understood by Bourdieu (1984, 291). is ‘ … a reputation for competence and an image of respectability and honorability … ’. Importantly, symbolic capital can function as a mediator, initiating and expanding one’s social capital. Being a local and respected member of the community could, for instance, make it easier to access social networks- and relationships. Finally, force-factors represent the individual’s agency and her ability to act cognitively based on her resource-factors.

Method and material

This study was part of a collaboration with the SSC, where the local institution explored the practices of Swedish sports clubs in delivering sport in socioeconomically deprived areas, targeting migrant youths. The material consists of 12 semi-structured interviews with sports club representatives. These sports clubs were sampled by the SSC, on the basis that the study sought to elicit information from sports clubs with the most experience with the subject matter. The criteria for sampling was thus the experience of sports clubs, and their perceived success. ‘Success’ is, however, not easily defined. We conceptualized success as the sports clubs’ ability to recruit and maintain migrant youths over an extended period. It is here fitting to briefly define what is meant by ‘migrant’. The project had a place-based emphasis at its core, targeting socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, while less attention was paid to single out whether sports clubs engaged with (specific) migrants. Regardless, these areas are populated by people of migrant background, and perhaps especially so in Sweden where spatial, ethnic, and socioeconomic segregation is peaking (Grundström & Molina, 2016). Thus, the sports clubs all had in common that they were situated in disadvantaged areas, ridden with high crime-rates and employment, and engaged with youths – naturally, these youths had migrant backgrounds, but the backgrounds varied. The sports clubs engaged with refugee-initiatives, first-second generation migrants, or generally youths with migrant parents. We thus took a broad definition of ‘migrant youths’, which is a limitation we acknowledge. Through long-term collaborations and knowledge of their local sports clubs, these districts were in an adequate position to involve sport clubs they deemed most appropriate. Thus, the material is not representative of Swedish sports clubs (see Stenling and Fahlén 2016) but should be seen as ‘extreme cases’ (Seawright and Gerring 2008), where the study sought to understand ‘best practices’. Four districts were asked to nominate five sports clubs each. Each sport club was asked to participate, out of which 12 agreed. The sampling strategy has limitations, which will be addressed later.

The representatives came from sports clubs with different sports; most played soccer, followed by multisport clubs (offering at least two different sports within the same organization), while a few played floorball, boxing, and rugby. Most sports clubs targeted children and youths between five and 15 years of age, and two sports clubs were specifically concerned with girls. Out of these, both sports clubs played football, where one club had 12-year-old girls, and the other had girls between the age of eight and 17. Most of the representatives were coaches, while a minority held administrative positions, such as board members or coordinators of integration initiatives. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim by a professional translation agency. The interviews lasted between one and one and a half hours. Ethically, the study followed local standards, ensuring participants’ anonymity, consent, confidentiality, and the right to exterminate participation at any given time. Since the study was conducted in collaboration with the SSC, the participants are heavily anonymized to prevent identification between the districts and participants, hence why the sport club representatives’ positions are not directly referred to in the results, nor are they presented here in the method section in any greater detail.

The paper followed a (critical) realist-approach in constructing the interview guide and in analysing the data. Questions were formed as open-ended, and aimed to explore the context the representatives operated within, their intentions and actual practices, how their efforts translated into results and most importantly: what mechanisms underlie their work? What components are necessary for sports clubs to run sustainable sport-for-integration agendas? The coding procedure followed Wiltshire and Ronkainen’s (2021) critical realist approach to thematic analysis. Transcripts were coded one by one, with the first transcription inductively coded. Nascent themes were added. In the following transcriptions, deductive coding took place where themes were noted in accordance with contradictions, corroborations, and the intensity of these themes. The themes were later grouped into the different levels of ‘nature’ of the critical realist-conception and interpreted as links between the levels according to the PPCT-framework.

Results

The results section briefly introduce the important individual characteristic of the coach to set the scene for understanding how these characteristics interact with different environmental factors in the making of the proximal process. These processes are divided into three parts: interactions with parents, young leaders and establishing collaborations.

Bronfenbrenner’s Person: the coach as the main agent of change

Consistent with previous literature, the coach was here the main agent of change; person-related characteristics were frequently cited as major factors for the clubs’ success. They consisted of three main themes: the representatives’ motivation, mixed forms of capital, and cultural sensitivity.

All representatives uniformly agreed that consistency and continuity were key factors in their work and that their personal drive was critical for the clubs’ success. All but one worked in unpaid volunteer positions, and all had invested substantial amounts of time into their clubs. This investment in time, along with motivation, was illustrated by one representative:

I’m there seven days a week […] It is the development that keeps me going. Regarding the youths’ social development – I mean, oh my god! We had youths who didn’t even speak, didn’t even enter conversations with others, and were shy. The club is the best that ever happened to them. Nowadays, I call them parrots. They talk, they are happy and that’s exactly the development you wish to see … (Representative 1, soccer)

This commitment seemed to be the standard, rather than the exception amongst all representatives, yet a few were also aware of the dangers of being overly committed: ‘ … you get so much from the youths […] and I think that’s helping me a lot because I have also seen a lot of trainers burning out’ (Representative 2, soccer). From the PPCT-lens, the motivation to contribute towards migrant youths’ inclusion in sports is a mental resource all representatives possessed and utilized through their agency. This feature varied little across the age spectrum. In the narratives of the representatives, it became clear that the club dominated their leisure time, regardless of whether the representative was young and without family, or, as in the case of representative (1), a family man of three young children.

Other personal factors entailed cultural sensitivity and a blend of cultural-, symbolic-, and social capital. Cultural sensitivity in the context of sports has often referred to the need to understand migrant groups as diverse, and that different individuals have different needs in the sporting context (Ahmad et al. 2020). Many of the representatives themselves were ethnic minorities, and thus had a personal understanding of the target groups’ backgrounds. Such understandings tapped into discrimination, family compositions- and relationships, potential barriers towards sport participation and more. This feature could also be understood as a form of symbolic capital, where some representatives could draw from their ‘insider-status’ as ethnic minorities. In turn, this could be translated into social connections (i.e. social capital). This was not the case for all representatives though, which impinged on their ability to reach certain groups, as shall be shown. Cultural capital, in this paper’s context, was conceptually closely related to the participants’ ability to navigate Swedish society, and general knowledge of associational life. Low levels of cultural capital, such as knowledge of norms and traditions, can exclude migrants from sports (Smith, Spaaij, and McDonald 2019), and here, cultural capital was, first and foremost, expressed in ways that signified how much the representatives knew their way around Swedish sports and its bureaucracy. This kind of capital, as we will return to, differed more radically between informants, and impinged on how well the club functioned in its day-to-day business.

The third factor was local embeddedness. In contrast to the degree of capital possessed, all representatives had profound local knowledge, with some being born and raised in their geographical area of interest. As such, the representatives often had a strong emotional connection to the area where they operated and spurred their intention to contribute to their ‘own’ area: ‘I’ve always lived in [area] and as a kid I played in [team]. I’m passionate about working with youths and I’ve done it since I was 15 years of age […] since then, I always wanted to work in disadvantaged areas […] because I know the conditions … ’ (participant 2, soccer). This local embeddedness could also be interpreted as a form of symbolic capital, earning the representatives recognition of being an actor in the local community. This translated into other forms of capital, most notably into strong social ties with the existing local community and its inhabitant.

Proximal processes

Parents – local grounding and cultural sensitivity as ways to establish trust

One important proximal process that occurred was between parents and coaches. In this process, many participants benefitted from their reputation as being ‘local’, as well as having cultural knowledge. This translated into robust relationships with the parents in the neighbourhood that placed their trust in the hands of the coaches.

However, most of the representatives highlighted a central concern they had historically experienced in some phase; most parents were, at least initially, rarely involved with the sports club. In the cases with older children and youths, they rarely helped the youths in logistical matters (e.g. transportation) – in cases with younger children, children were occasionally transported but the sports activity was mainly perceived as ‘ … the children’s activity, and not the parents’ business … ’ (participant, 10). In summary, parents had, in general, little knowledge of the club which coincided with lacking knowledge of sports and volunteerism in Sweden. The representatives were, however, able to utilize their personal resources to reach the parents. The perhaps most significant effect of cultural sensitivity and local embeddedness took place in the context of girls’ sport participation. Previous research has offered various explanations for minority girls’ underrepresentation, but often focused on minority girls’ restrictions in terms of culture, family responsibility, and parents’ reluctance to let their daughters ‘mix’ with boys in sporting settings (Strandbu, Bakken, and Sletten 2019). These matters were prevalent here too: ‘ … the only resistance we’ve faced is with these girls […] from these cultures […] but I’m from such a culture as well, but we had to re-think and adapt from what they [parents] prefer … ’ (participant 1, soccer). Drawing from his background and knowledge of cultural constraints and parental preferences, participant one proceeded to hire female-only coaches. In this sense, participant one understood that the sports club, structurally, had to accommodate these parents’ preferences, and not enforce these parents’ adaptation to the club’s preferences. Such accommodations enabled mutual trust between participant (1) and the parents. However, these structural accommodations were not always present elsewhere – for instance, participant (9) without the same immediate cultural awareness, insisted that sex-segregated activities are segregating per se. Such sentiments are prevalent elsewhere, for instance, in Denmark, where politicians have voiced concerns about ‘parallel societies’ as a function of female-only swimming (Lenneis and Agergaard, 2018). Because of participant nine’s reluctance to accommodate these parental preferences, this participant also struggled with girls’ participation.

Another representative (5, boxing) illuminated absent parents in a comparative perspective, utilizing his son’s middle-class soccer team as an illustration:

… yesterday it was a game, and then there was a message just like ‘hi, our court is covered in snow and the municipality won’t do anything […] How many parents can come 30 minutes before game-start and help shovel snow? […] and then, you have 15 – 20 parents with shovels […] I don’t have that commitment from my parents”.

Similarly, few parents showed up for formal meetings. While some representatives expressed frustration, most representatives approached this in a culturally sensitive way. Most representatives declared that these parents care for their children and that the lacking engagement was hardly a sign of the opposite but signalled a detachment from Swedish associational life, reflective of the wider segregation in Sweden. Most representatives noted that creative strategies had to be adopted to overcome the distance between the parents and the club. The underlying mechanisms underpinning these strategies were to form personal relationships with the parents, and to ensure a foundation of trust. Accordingly, instead of inviting to formal meetings, some representatives re-branded formal meetings as ‘social encounters’, inviting parents to picnics and events. Other strategies were more time-consuming:

… I come to visit at their homes, where the parents have set a six-meter-long table with food and drinks because the trainer has arrived […] And these youths, that guy who runs around and tells all the other children “[coach] is at my house”, so all the children outside: “when will you come to our homes [coach]?” […] so, they take great pride in that, and the parents celebrate it, they get to know my face and it is easier for them to attend games, easier for them to drive the children to games …

As also noted by several representatives, such strategies also showed that they lived in the area and were a ‘local’ with much in common with the parents, thus creating a symbolic value. These strategies established a personal relationship with the parents, grounded in trust and a sense of being recognized, instead of being problematized. Although strategies varied, all representatives agreed that personal communication with the parents was essential. Without their trust, it would be difficult to reach their children or make arrangements that facilitated participation. De-formalizing the contact with parents made the relationship feel less bureaucratic. Whereas one representative (2, soccer) asserted that flyers and formal meetings would enforce a feeling of formalization and demands on the parents, the personal contact seemed to translate into an intimate and reciprocal relationship. Accordingly, trust was able to grow as a product of a two-way interaction between representatives and parents, not by forcing unknown formalities upon them. Such interactions seemed easier when the representatives understood the contextual and cultural conditions in which these interactions took place and made appropriate structural changes.

Young ‘homegrown’ leaders – reducing power dynamics

Some elements threatened the clubs’ longevity. As illustrated in the first section, many representatives were aware of the personal toll of being deeply committed to the club. Against this backdrop, many representatives expressed concerns about the club’s future. Notably, all but one of the informants ran large clubs and constantly contemplated this dilemma. A uniformly agreed solution was that the club would benefit from recruiting and having support from young leaders. This was, however, no easy task.

The red line through the representatives’ sentiment was connected to the voluntaristic nature of their work. It seemed difficult to engage youths since no, or minor, financial reward existed. At the backdrop of one representative’s statement: ‘ … you have to have a burning passion in this line of work, otherwise, it won’t work’, it was generally felt that this burning desire could not be taught to the youths and that the absence of externally motivating factors hindered the onset of their leadership positions. In other cases, three representatives noted that youth leaders commonly opted out when they realized that the voluntary nature of their work entailed more than simply running a class a few times a week. The meaning of voluntary work was often confusing and difficult to understand for the youths. These factors applied when the youths were within an appropriate age range to start volunteering for the club.

The preliminary solutions were the process of consistently moulding and socializing youths in the club environment. Several representatives highlighted the importance of acquiring ‘home-grown’ leaders: leaders with local embeddedness, a thorough understanding of the club’s purpose and structure, and history within the area and the club. Two respondents highlighted explicit strategies to set youths on this trajectory. These strategies entailed involving youths in the decision-making processes of the club. As one representative (5, boxing) stated, ‘ … they [youths] haven’t been involved earlier […] partially because we operate in an area with great cultural diversity where the majority are from countries with stricter hierarchical culture … ’. In this case, the representative and board member accounted for the club’s budget and allowed the youths to decide how the money should be spent, with some supervision. The youths became responsible for the renovation of the boxing gym and became the central decision-makers in the process. The following excerpt illustrates the essence of the representative’s (5) idea:

… I accounted for the economy to them […] and ‘this is the money we have, and this is money you can do something with. What do you want to do with it? They were like ‘oh, we can decide?’ Yes, because it’s your club! It’s not my club, I’m not running this alone, we are running it together […] so that’s how I try to work, to involve them as much as possible.

Ultimately, several youths became board members and were highlighted as emotionally invested in the club. Against this backdrop, transparency was a key factor in involving the youths and, implicitly, stimulating their inner motivation regarding the club’s cause. The strategy was predicated on the need for the youths to develop a sense of collective belonging and feeling that they too owed, and decided, the club’s fate. This proximal process occurred over time and did not emphasize voluntary work in the spirit of work as we know it traditionally. Instead, it was a process where the youths could decide on important matters and create a sense of collective belonging.

Collaborations

All the representatives acknowledged that collaborations with external stakeholders were central to their organization. A variety of collaborations could be discerned, notably with the municipality, housing services, the migration agency, schools, and the SSC to mention a few. The participants drew extensively from their social-, cultural-, and sometimes symbolic capital in the making of these collaborations.

For instance, one initiative was led by a representative (3, handball) with immense knowledge of Swedish sport and its bureaucracy. This knowledge was accompanied by an entrepreneurial spirit, knowledge of how initiatives benefit from collaborations, how the SSC could be used, and an influential social network to rely on. This representative explained how he had combined several funds for a summer initiative with over 3000 children: ‘ … we got local support from the SSC to run it, but also with help of the city, because they have something they call summer trainee […] so we got summer workers without … yes, they get their pay from the city’ (representative 3). Combining funds allowed this representative to launch a funded large-scale initiative. The difference was striking compared to other representatives, who did not enjoy the same degree of either social or cultural capital. On the other end of this spectrum, representative (4, multi-sport), a first-generation migrant, expressed both frustration and pride when explaining the daunting task of engaging with the Swedish sports bureaucracy. This representative had struggled to understand the basics of Swedish sport and its administration, how to run an organization, and what funding opportunities existed. Moreover, the same representative had initially no contacts within the sports system, or the municipality, but embarked on a rather lonely journey when attempting to start the sports club. The representative’s friends were also reluctant to his ambitions, and tensions with the local municipality made it difficult to book times in the local sports hall.

Although the scale of an initiative is no clear-cut measure of the quality of sports delivery, it is fair to say that, in terms of sheer participation, representative (3) benefitted from his social network and knowledge of Swedish sport and other institutions, whereas participant (4) was severely hampered by lacking all of the above. In the middle of these opposites, most representatives had a developed understanding of Swedish sport and experience with getting SSC funding.

As part of recruitment strategies, a range of representatives explained that collaborations with the schools were critical. In the words of one representative (10; soccer): ‘ … if they return home after school, their gone … ’, meaning they would be less likely to return to soccer practice, presumably because looking after siblings and doing chores would take precedence, according to representative (10). Solutions to this issue were to be present in the schools and allocate time slots where the youths could directly come to practice after school had ended. Other representatives (3; handball) went to greater lengths, offering study help after-school, and from there on attempting to steer them to the sports clubs. Accordingly, some representatives broadened their scope of including them in their organization according to what sort of collaboration they had. In the mentioned case, representative (3) also aimed to provide educational help because of the club’s affiliation with the local school.

Moreover, temporality was a key factor in the collaborations with other institutions as well. For example, representative (6; soccer), had trouble getting his youths to weekend games, mainly because many were practicing Muslims and attended the mosque around the time of weekend games. Albeit experiencing some friction with the mosque’s imam at first, they were able to sort out solutions so that youths were able to attend these weekend games. This representative understood he had to accommodate this aspect of his youths’ lives; at the same time, he was a respected local name, with an in-depth understanding of both the needs of his sports club and how the sports club was nested within other structures (such as the mosque). Initiating talks with the imam and working out a solution was thus contingent on his understanding of his surroundings, and the composite of his symbolic-, cultural-, and social capital.

Finally, most of the representatives had good relationships with their district-based SSC representatives and had at multiple times attended lectures and courses intended to make them more inclusive. Moreover, all the representatives had enjoyed (short-term) funding at least one time. The SSC’s help was more profound in some cases than in others – for example, with regards to representative (4; multisport), his lacking cultural capital made it difficult to run a sustainable organization in the beginning. In this regard, the SSC representatives in his districts had gone to great lengths to help him: ‘ … there was so much I didn’t know about associational life, and so it was [SSC representative’s] task to teach me […] he has taught me so much, both when he has been working but also a lot on his spare time … ’. In this case, the SSC representative had extended his services beyond the formal educational activities provided by the SSC and had become a critical actor for this representative.

However, a minor set of representatives were critical to how the SSC operated in their area. The critique was generally directed at the format of financial funding, as some of these representatives understood that some of their initiatives would dissolve if they were not continuously granted project-based funding. These initiatives were constructed as ‘spontaneous sport’. Spontaneous sport is an alternative delivery of sport, where youths drop in as they like, without any registration. Registration of members is a core pillar of the regular funding structure of the SSC, where each club gets money based on the number of unique memberships. However, in spontaneous sports where no registrations occur, this funding is not possible, and the clubs are left to apply on an annual basis for new project-based funding. This procedure is exhausting for sports clubs (Hertting and Karlefors 2021). As representative (10; soccer) expressed in frustration, the replies from the SSC were unsatisfying: ‘I mean, this is what they [locals] want! But the SSC hardly cares because it’s outside their jurisdiction’. In a similar vein, representative (11, multisport) commented that: ‘ … it’s mainly been the municipality that sponsored us, rarely the SSC […] you don’t have the energy to deal [with the SSC] on that matter […] you’ll just have to figure it out yourself’. Since the SSC is subject to governmental auditing and monitoring (Österlind and Wright 2014) it is worthwhile to note that this critique exclusively emanated when the format of sports delivery was spontaneous sports; i.e. a delivery of sport that could not contribute to measurable results, since no member registration could take place.

Discussion

This study sought to understand how Swedish sports clubs in socioeconomically deprived areas enable migrant youths’ long-term participation, and how these clubs cope with increasing expectations in their operative work. Two central takeaways from this paper will be discussed here, scrutinized through Rothman’s community work lens. Firstly, this entails the configuration of sports clubs, and specifically, the link between the representatives’ resources and their surroundings. The second takeaway is a discussion of the relationship between sports clubs and the SSC.

Locality development takes place as a collaborative intervention with a range of local actors involved (Rothman 1996). A web of individuals and organizations was identified as crucial to migrant youths’ inclusion, both within- and outside the sports club. Consistent with previous research, the coach is the main agent of change and must possess critical competencies to connect with the practitioners (Van der Veken et al. 2022). In this case, such competencies (resources in the Bronfenbrennerian sense) were referred to as resilience, and ambition, but also awareness of youths’ conditions and backgrounds. Importantly, and as noted by Van der Veken et al. (2022, p. 489–490), sports programs and clubs are a ‘ … social lab in which social workers, sport coaches, youth workers […] and many more profiles collaborate … ’. In this study, such collaborations included the local mosque, the SSC, schools, and much more, thus reflecting the intersectoral nature of sports programmes- and clubs work (Haudenhuyse et al. 2020), also characteristic of community work (Sjöberg and Turunen 2022). In this sense, the study further adds to already existing works, showing that collaborations are contextually bound (Ekholm and Holmlid 2020), and often managed by a few ambitious individuals (Ekholm 2017). One conclusion here is that sport club representatives need to be in tune with their immediate surroundings to understand the collaborations necessary to initiate with local actors; however, whether such collaborations are initiated will depend upon the representatives’ resources, such as social-, symbolic-, and cultural capital. A careful note can be made concerning the strategy of raising and utilizing youth trainers. While the data contained successful examples of sports clubs that succeeded in this matter, this might be a draining and difficult strategy, particularly in underserved areas. This would also mean that these coaches might be at an elevated risk for burnout. This, potentially difficult strategy should be considered while keeping in mind that this data contained ‘good’ examples.

Secondly, as Jönsson and Scaramuzzino (2022) show, civil society organizations add value to the statutory interventions provided by the public sector, but there can also be tensions emanating from different organizational logics in such collaborations. Such tensions were also present here, albeit ‘internally’ within the sport movement, and indicate potential friction. Swedish sports clubs are autonomous entities but benefit from support, notably from sports federations (De Bock et al. 2021). When the delivery of sports fell out of the SSC’s jurisdiction, tensions and lack of support emerged, showing that there can be a conflict between initiatives at the local level, and when the club does not gain support from the expert-oriented ‘social planners’. While sports clubs can engage in a variety of collaborations, sports federations should be an obvious natural ally (Blomqvist Mickelsson, 2022). Yet, other research shows that it is not always clear whether the SSC represent the sports clubs, or whether they promote their own agenda (Stenling and Sam, 2020). To conclude, the governmental pressure on the SSC may, at times, hamper their support of sports clubs; a result of a neoliberal current in Sweden, emphasizing new public management governance.

Limitations

Some limitations are worth mentioning. The participants were sampled by the SSC. Such sampling is likely limiting in terms of what the participants were inclined to say about the SSC. One tentative outcome here was that the participants were careful to voice critical concerns about the SSC’s practices. Specifically, it is plausible that sports clubs with critical collaborations with the SSC also refrained from critiquing them. In this sense, the inclusion of less successful sports clubs could have shed light on other important factors. Due to logistical factors and funding, further sampling and data collection was outside the paper’s scope. Secondly, the paper was limited to understanding migrant youths’ inclusion in sports, and less so on what developmental outcomes seemed to exist. Such a concept is limited since simply practicing sports cannot be equated to developmental outcomes.

Conclusions

While much has already been written on sports clubs as welfare providers, the main advancement this paper makes is linking sports clubs explicitly to the field of Nordic community work. By conceptualizing sports clubs as locality developments, and further disentangling the factors that sustain and affect their work through the PPCT-model, I have attempted to link sport to a conventional strand within social work literature. By doing so, I hope to invite scholars and practitioners to discuss and critique such a conceptualization of (Swedish) sports clubs, instead of maintaining the academic ‘silos’ of sport-for-development research (Whitley et al. 2022). Secondly, introducing sports clubs as potential actors in Nordic community work might strengthen an otherwise marginalized aspect of Nordic social work (Turunen, 2009). This is so, especially since the Swedish sports movement is getting increasingly funded to combat social issues (Bjärsholm and Norberg 2021).

The current study invites research into other avenues. Specifically, while internal practices and collaborations with external actors are highlighted as essential here, there is a need to explore how professional social workers engage with sports actors. As recently noted (Hermens et al. 2017) such understandings are lacking and could be useful in further understanding sports clubs’ role in the configuration of community work initiatives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant from Delmos.