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From racial exclusions to new inclusions: black and minority ethnic participation in football clubs in the East Midlands of England
This article reports on survey and interview data from a two-phase study examining
the shape and scope of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) participation in amateur
football clubs in Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. Survey results
identified strongly differentiated patterns of participation and a concentration of BME
(male) players, coaches and management committee members at a small number of
clubs in the city of Leicester. Interview data contextualized the socio-historical
development and ongoing reality of these BME clubs as a consequence of – and as
active resistance to – racisms and exclusions within pre-existing and homogeneously
White local football networks. BME clubs also had distinct social, cultural and
religious attachments and had historically operated as symbolic and practical sites of
community mobilization and cultural identity production for specific BME
communities. Survey and interview data indicated that BME clubs and newer ‘multiethnic’
clubs increasingly featured a strong focus on the provision of valuable
participation opportunities to younger players from a range of culturally and
religiously diverse backgrounds and from communities experiencing disproportionate
levels of social and economic deprivation. The article concludes by examining the
role of BME clubs and newer ‘multi-ethnic’ clubs as facilitators of new inclusions and
positive multi-cultural leisure spaces for young footballers within the context of the
changing local cultural landscape of Leicester and with reference to wider debates
around racial integration and multiculturalism in late modern Britain.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
International Review for the Sociology of SportVolume
46Issue
1Pages
23 - 44Citation
BRADBURY, S., 2011. From racial exclusions to new inclusions: Black and minority ethnic participation in football clubs in the East Midlands of England. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 46 (1), pp.23-44Publisher
SAGE Publications LtdVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2011ISSN
1012-6902Publisher version
Language
- en