Facilitating migrant youths’ inclusion into Swedish sport clubs in underserved areas

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Swedish sports movement has gained an increasingly profound role in addressing social issues. One such issue is migrant youths’ social inclusion in underserved areas, and the underlying assumption is that sports clubs fulfill an important function here. However, retaining migrant youths in organized sports in these areas is difficult, and sports clubs often struggle with the resources to satisfy social policies. This paper explored the practices of 12 experienced Swedish sports clubs to illuminate the strategies deployed to recruit and retain migrant youths in underserved areas. Sports clubs were conceptualized as local development-initiatives according to Rothman’s community work classification, and the results were analysed with Bronfenbrenner’s Person-Process-Context-Time framework. The results show that sports clubs are run by compassionate and locally embedded individuals, but that the representatives’ different forms of capital and sensitivity differentiate their success. Three processes are stressed as essential. Clubs need to establish robust relationships with migrant youths’ parents. Secondly, since clubs are contingent on driven, but strained, individuals, it is imperative to recruit and utilize (migrant) youth trainers. Finally, sports clubs must work in tandem with important institutions, such as the school. In summary, sports clubs must adopt creative strategies, and have resilience, time, and support. These findings indicate that enabling migrant youths’ inclusion into sports requires holistic solutions.