Abstract

‘I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose’. With this powerful statement Mesut Özil resigned from Germany’s national football team. His resignation act not only highlights growing controversies and uneasiness around the representation of the football nation by players with migration backgrounds, but also marks the fragility of national belonging. In this article, we deconstruct in detail Özil’s powerful resignation elaborating upon Norbert Elias and John Scotson’s (1994 (1965)) ‘established–outsider model’. With this, we will analyse the power dynamics underlying the processes of national belonging. Moreover, we extend the established-outsider approach by using the fluid and contextual borders between formal and moral deservedness of citizenship. In our conclusion, we revisit Özil’s statement and recapitulate our theoretical explanations on the sensitivities of this case as well on how to navigate a way out of the contested competition between nationalities in the context of international football.

摘要

“当我们获胜时，我是德国人，但是当我们失败时，我是移民”。麦苏特·厄齐尔（MesutÖzil）的这一强有力的声明从德国国家足球队辞职。他的辞职行为不仅突显了具有移民背景的球员在足球国家代表权周围日益增加的争议和不安，而且标志着国家归属的脆弱性。在本文中，我们详细解构了厄齐尔的有力辞职，阐述了诺伯特·埃里亚斯和约翰·斯科特森（1994（1965））的“既定-局外人模型”。借此，我们将分析国民归属过程中的动力动态。此外，我们通过使用形式和道德之间的流动和上下文边界扩展了既定局外人方法当之无愧的公民身份。在我们的结论中，我们回顾了厄齐尔的陈述，并概括了我们对这种情况的敏感性以及在国际足球背景下如何摆脱民族之间竞争的出路的理论解释。