ABSTRACT

Sport is widely utilised as an integration tool for refugee-background young people in resettlement countries, with a concomitant research focus on the implementation and outcomes of health and integration initiatives. However, a narrow focus on integration as the context and outcome of sport participation limits our understanding of the wider role sport plays as a sphere of belonging for refugee-background young people. By taking a wider view of football that includes fandom, informal participation, and community sport, we can gain important insights into how it functions as a mobile, transnational sphere of belonging that can, for some, provide a continuous sense of embodied, affective, practical, and sociocultural belonging in the face of multiple migrations and transitions. Drawing on three ethnographic and participatory studies conducted with refugee-background young people in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Netherlands, this article explores the ways in which engagement with football both precedes and exceeds integration in the everyday lives of refugee-background young people. The authors demonstrate the need to place instrumental sports-based integration approaches in a wider transnational and historical context, and to attend to the wider affordances of sport for refugee-background young people.

摘要

体育被广泛用作重新安置国家难民背景的年轻人的整合工具，伴随的研究重点是健康和整合倡议的实施和结果。然而，将融合作为体育参与的背景和结果的狭隘关注限制了我们对体育作为具有难民背景的年轻人的归属领域所发挥的更广泛作用的理解。通过更广泛地看待足球，包括球迷、非正式参与和社区运动，我们可以深入了解它如何作为一个移动的、跨国的归属领域发挥作用，对于某些人来说，它可以提供一种持续的体现、情感、面对多重迁移和过渡时的实际和社会文化归属感。本文借鉴在英国、澳大利亚和荷兰对具有难民背景的年轻人进行的三项民族志和参与性研究，探讨了足球参与先于和超越融入难民背景的年轻人日常生活的方式. 作者证明有必要将基于工具性体育的整合方法置于更广泛的跨国和历史背景中，并关注具有难民背景的年轻人更广泛的体育可供性。