Rethinking Sports and Integration

Rethinking Sports and Integration offers a critical cultural analysis of the idea that sport can promote the integration of migrants and their descendants. It examines the origins of this idea and the concept of integration, and analyzes the problems in focus, the methods applied and the results of sports-related integration programmes. The text also redefines sports-related integration with perspectives from migration studies that highlight the super-diversity within migrant groups, and explore the various ways in which transnational connections influence participation in sport within migrant communities. This book is important reading for students and researchers working in sport development, sport policy or migration studies, as well as a valuable resource for sports governing bodies, policymakers and project workers.

Sine Agergaard is a social anthropologist and professor in humanistic and social sports science at the Department of Health Science and Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. She is also a co-founder and currently the head of the International Network for Research in Sport and Migration Issues (spomi-net).

1. Introduction, 2. Defining sports-related integration and its shortcomings, 3. Evolving policies of sports-related integration, 4. Broadening the problem in focus, 5. Rethinking programme techniques, 6. Critiquing expectations of social capital in sports, 7. Applying diversity management, 8. Conclusion: recapitulating sports-related integration policies and programmes