Forced migration and sport: an introduction

Is sport's ‘gateway for inclusion’ on the latch for ethnic minorities? A discourse analysis of sport policy for inclusion and integration

“…Despite some strategically selected statistics concerning participation rates or fleeting references to research on the experiences of ethnic minority girls in organised sport, the ‘policy problem’ of non-participating ethnic minorities in sport (either as physically active or a volunteer) is normatively constructed and integral to the general policy issue of participation. Policy has generally marginalised integration research albeit generated with methodogically blunt, or in some cases, repressive tools (Agergaard, 2018; De Martini Ugolotti and Caudwell, 2022; Spaaij et al, 2022). Sports participation is reified as having an inherent value for everyone, as well as social benefits, such as improved health, social well-being and access to social networks.…”

“…It reveals how the language of sports policy not only frames how resources are distributed, acted upon and who benefits, but significantly also shapes the ways in which we come to learn about the interests, needs and concerns of inclusion/integration (Ball, 1993; Piggin, 2014). It contributes to the body of knowledge that reveals an urgent need for a re-conceptualisation of sport policy for integration/inclusion that recognises the contemporary diversification of migration and methodologies that avoid promoting nationalism (Agergaard, 2018; Agergaard et al, 2023; De Martini Ugolotti and Caudwell, 2022; Spaaij et al, 2022).…”

“…Following on from this more complex definition of integration, and extending Andersson's (2002) early work based on post-colonial perspectives, some scholars are also adopting concepts such as mimicry and hybridity to explore the possibilities for resistance and agency amongst ethnic minorities to assimilationist strategies of integration in, and through, sport (Agergaard et al, 2023) or developing participatory action research projects within a decolonial framework to work against dominant narratives of the ‘deficit Other’ who's responsibility is to integrate in the host society (Mashreghi S with Hassan, Yasmin, Mohammad, Ali, 2021). In sum, recent studies are founded upon the need to recognise a rapidly changing context for migration (e.g., unprecedented numbers of people migrating; the plurality of reasons for migration and the super-diversity within ethnic minorities; the superdiversity of many host societies; an international tendency to try to regulate and manage migration flows), as well as the shortcomings of previous research methodologies (Agergaard, 2018; De Martini Ugolotti and Caudwell, 2022; Spaaij et al, 2022). As De Martini Ugolotti and Caudwell (2021) claim much research has unwittingly replicated narrow, stereotypical ideas of migrants and re/produced simplistic binaries between integration and segregation, majority and minority groups and of unfamiliar host societies and longed-for homelands.…”