‘Football was the key’: the role of sports in facilitating migrants’ belonging and inclusion in Poland

Abstract

While there is a growing body of literature examining the roles of sports for newly arrived migrants and refugees in ‘super-diverse’ Western settings, less is known about the roles of such initiatives in other urban contexts, where everyday forms of ‘living with difference’ are only just emerging. Poland has become one of the biggest importers of migrant workers from outside of the EU in recent years. Drawing on five ethnographic cases of sports initiatives in Warsaw and Gdańsk supported by the wider findings from 80 interviews with young migrants, refugees and migrant-support stakeholders, we explore sports’ potential in establishing footholds in the new environments. We also investigate barriers impeding more egalitarian access to sports, in particular, related to limited resources available to migrants and refugees. Our findings suggest that in less diverse urban settings informal sports initiatives gather migrants with established cultural and social resources which are needed to navigate with ease in a largely homogeneous environment. We argue that to include migrants and refugees from more precarious backgrounds and with less confidence to reach out, some level of facilitation of participation (‘curation’) is crucial in allowing more diverse groups to benefit from sports initiatives.