Social integration of people with a migration background in Swiss sport clubs: A cross-level analysis

Abstract

Sport clubs are considered an ideal setting for the social integration of people with a migration background. However, they can also be a place of social closure practices, where assimilative ideas and ethnic boundaries are present. Besides the individual characteristics of the members, adequate club organizational structures are relevant for preventing social closure and facilitating social integration. Thus, the role of organizational structures for social integration might differ between natives and people with a migration background. Based on data from 42 Swiss sport clubs and 780 sport club members, with and without a migration background, we analyzed individual (migration background and membership biography) and structural factors (situational, club goals, and club culture) using multilevel models and tested cross-level interactions between structural variables and migration background. The results reveal that membership biography (e.g. membership duration and volunteering) and migration background are relevant for social integration. The estimated cross-level effects reveal that, unlike for natives and second-generation people with a migration background, structural conditions are especially relevant for first-generation people with a migration background. For example, social integration increases with a higher proportion of people with a migration background in the club or a less assimilative club culture.

Sport and migration in the age of superdiversity

“…An increasing number of articles in IRSS have also examined sports in migration or the role of sports for minority ethnic and diaspora groups (e.g., Bradbury 2010, Burdsey 2010, Campbell and Williams 2013, Fletcher 2011, Krouwel et al 2006, Joseph 2012, Spracklen and Spracklen 2008, Thangaraj 2010). In the wake of the so-called refugee crisis around 2015, such literature has expanded further (e.g., Buser et al 2021, Dowling 2019, Kyeremeh 2019, McSweeney and Nakamura 2019. This has led to specific attention being paid to racialized and politicised groups in sport, such as Muslim women (e.g., Kay 2006, Toffoletti and Palmer 2015, Lenneis, Evans and Agergaard 2022 and Black minority ethnic groups in western contexts (e.g., Adjepong 2019, Campbell and Williams 2013, Doidge 2013, Parry, Cleland and Kavanagh 2019.…”

Sports participation and leadership: Gender and nationality disparities in Spain

“…This minority group participates less in sports than young people from the majority population. Research has highlighted this inequality in multiple countries over time, such as Denmark (Agergaard et al, 2016), Finland (Zacheus, 2010), Germany (Burrmann et al, 2015), Norway (Strandbu et al, 2019), the Netherlands (Elling & Claringbould, 2005), and Switzerland (Buser et al, 2022). These findings underscore the need to understand the role of preferences, self-segregation, and collective exclusion mechanisms (Gomez-Gonzalez et al, 2021;van Haaften, 2019).…”