This article focuses on the meaning of sport activities for refugees living in a reception centre. We conceptualise the reception centre as a liminal space and analyse how this liminal space affects the meanings of sport activities for refugees. Based on interviews with refugees living in a reception centre we show how sport in this liminal space is to a large extent experienced as a way to overcome the boredom experienced at the centre, to forget about their daily struggles, but also has a large social function as it is an easy opportunity to meet with others. We argue that liminal spaces constrain the organisation of sport activities and its possibilities for realising sport’s ascribed positive spill-overs, such as increasing feelings of belonging. We call for future research, including creative social research approaches, that focus on refugees’ own narratives in order to better understand the role social space plays for the meaning of sport activities for this particular vulnerable group.

It has long been established that voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) are ascribed a prominent social role by governments. Several scholars highlight the ascribed social values in sport policy to voluntary sports clubs and their possible implications for these voluntary organizations. Most of these studies focus on national sport policies. However, several studies signal a dominant role for local government in the public funding of sport. This discrepancy between local funding responsibility and scholarly attention to national sport policy legitimizes the following question: Which social roles do local governments ascribe to voluntary sports clubs? Further, the particularities of the social values of voluntary sports clubs have received only sparse attention. Using institutional theory as a theoretical lens, this paper addresses these lacunae through a systematic document analysis of the municipal sport policies of the twenty largest Dutch municipalities. These municipalities address four different social roles for voluntary sports clubs: (1) sports clubs as social infrastructure operators, (2) sports clubs as educational institutes, (3) sports clubs as service providers, and (4) sports clubs as project implementers. The article further elaborates on these four social roles and argues that these form a normative institutional framework for VSCs.

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Abstract This article aims to gain a better understanding on micro processes of how frontline professionals use institutional logics in their day-to-day work. It contributes to the growing literature on the dynamics between institutions and the professional frontline. To further develop this field of study, a conceptual framework is presented that integrates institutional logics, vocabularies of practice, and narratives as central concepts. By adopting a composite narrative approach and identifying vocabularies of practice, the article interprets how frontline professionals make use of different logics to make sense of a new principle introduced in their professional field. Findings are based on a case study of professional patient collaboration in healthcare. The article composes five narratives that act as vehicles through which healthcare professionals use five logics: a medical professional logic, managerial logic, commercial logic, consultation logic, and patient-centeredness logic. It argues that frontline professionals use vocabularies of practice to assemble narratives that help them to navigate between a plurality of logics. It further shows that professionals move fluently from one narrative to another, critiquing the ideas of adherence to a dominant logic and conflict solving. The article finalizes with a discussion that advocates for a process studies perspective and a stronger focus on micro processes in research on professional performance in the context of institutional plurality.

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This article adds a much needed microlevel perspective to the literature on interactions between civil society organizations and governments. I argue that a microlevel perspective assists in making connections between two dominant streams in the literature on government-CSO relations: an empirical-analytical stream and a critical stream. It aims to better understand the interactions and relations, by analysing the institutional work done by CSOs' members. Adopting this approach puts CSO members in a more agentic position. Interactional processes are brought to the centre of analysis. The Dutch Community Sport Coach programme was used as a case to illustrate the usefulness of the approach. Through a one-year organizational ethnography, the article scrutinizes the way in which members of one CSO enact the organization's service delivery relationship with a municipality. Through a multidimensional perspective on agency, the analysis shows how individual CSO members act as embedded agents that assimilate a public logic into the dominant community logic. It further shows the CSO's members efforts and struggle to maintain their community logic. The article argues that an analysis of the microfoundations of government-civil society organization relations foregrounds the multivocality of the relationship as foundational.

Studies on sport mega-events and their legacies often seem only loosely connected to local experiences. Stories on sport mega-event legacy appear as a setting-thescene or function as a reference to illustrate specific types of legacy. However, stories themselves are never the primary focus in these studies. What is generally lacking from these studies is an interpretive perspective, giving voice to ordinary citizens' everyday experiences of legacies in mundane aspects of their lives and their local environment. The article aims to add an analysis of stories to the existing body of knowledge as an innovative way of interpreting sport mega-events' legacies. We introduce a narrative ethnographic approach for studying sport mega-event legacy, by looking at the way stories and narrative analysis are used to conceptualise legacy in the sociological subfield of ageing-studies. In our case study we show how citizens from one Johannesburg township make sense of the legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup one year after the event, by analysing people's stories about two sport-for-development projects. We conclude that local residents South African Review of Sociology Volume 46 | Number 1 | 2015 pp. 87-105 88 Local meanings of a sport mega-event's Waardenburg et al of the township of Alexandra perceive changes in public safety and the image of Alexandra as the most important positive legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. At the same time they take a critical stance towards the World Cup's legacy, because personal situations and community structures were often disrupted, rather than improved. We maintain that a narrative ethnographic approach provides extensive accounts about sport mega-event legacies, which help to better understand the different faces of sport mega-events' legacies at a micro level.