The Potential of Community Sport for Social Inclusion

Exploring Cases Across the Globe

Hebe Schaillée, Reinhard Haudenhuyse, Lieve Bradt, Hebe Schaillée, Reinhard Haudenhuyse, Lieve Bradt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000586190
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Social inclusion is a pressing issue confronting all levels of sport today, and community sport in particular. Sport is being promoted as an inclusive environment in which people of all backgrounds and abilities can participate and access a range of social and health benefits. Moreover, sport is often heralded as a vehicle for promoting social inclusion in other societal domains. Yet, the policy ideal of 'sport for all' is not always realised in practice, and community sport continues to be plagued by various forms of discrimination and social exclusion. This book brings together a team of scholars from across the globe whose research addresses the complex relationship between community sport and social inclusion. Their contributions critically examine the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion in community sport, as well as the broader outcomes and impacts that sports programmes may have in promoting, or hindering, social inclusion in other areas of life, such as employment, education and migrant integration.

This book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and advanced students of sport, sociology, politics, social work and public policy.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Introduction – Community sport and social inclusion: international perspectives

Hebe Schaillée

, Reinhard Haudenhuyse

and Lieve Bradt

ABSTRACT

This opening article examines the relationship between community sport and social inclusion in research and practice. We discuss the notion of community sport, its multifarious meanings and diverse applications in different parts of the world. We further explore the conceptual and practical links between community sport and different conceptions of social inclusion. In doing so, the article draws together key themes, issues and debates addressed in the collection of articles in this special issue. We conclude by formulating implications and directions for future research and practice.

Social inclusion: a challenge for ‘sport for all’

Individuals and groups in society can experience social exclusion in multiple domains, such as education, employment, health, social participation and community integration (Levitas et al. 2007). Tackling social exclusion – often through promoting social inclusion – is a global challenge for policy makers, practitioners and societies in general. In this context, sport is often promoted as an inclusive environment, in which people of all backgrounds and abilities can participate and access a range of personal, health and social benefits. The European Sport for All Charter, adopted in 1976 by the Council of Europe and revised and renamed as the European Sport Charter in 2001, states that:

[M]easures shall be taken to ensure that all citizens have opportunities to take part in sport and where necessary, additional measures shall be taken aimed at enabling […] disadvantaged or disabled individuals or groups to be able to exercise such opportunities effectively. (Council of Europe 2001, 2–3)

The policy ideal of ‘sport for all’ is, however, not easily realised in practice. Sport continues to be beleaguered by various forms of discrimination and social exclusion (Collins and Kay 2014; Spaaij, Magee, and Jeanes 2014). This observation has led to the establishment of a variety of programmes that mainly focus on reaching groups that are not included in, nor attracted by more mainstream sport provisions. Community sports are perceived as an alternative to mainstream sport provisions such as organized sports clubs. Notwithstanding the diversity of organizational formats, policy frameworks, funding schemes and professional practices, community sport programmes and provisions have a number of common characteristics (Haudenhuyse et al. 2018). Most community sport initiatives are characterized by their accessibility, affordability, local focus, modest budgets and relatively informal structures (Cuskelly 2004; Doherty, Misener, and Cuskelly 2014; Theeboom, Haudenhuyse, and De Knop 2010). Community sport initiatives typically use a flexible, adaptable, (semi-)informal, people-centred approach, aimed at lowering the thresholds to participation in order to address the deficiencies of mainstream sport provisions (Haudenhuyse et al. 2018; Hylton and Totten 2013). Furthermore, community sports are often approached as more than ‘just’ sport in the community, as it aims to address social, political and cultural dimensions of inequality (Hylton and Totten 2013). However, the extent to which community sports initiatives contribute to the policy ideals of ‘sport for all’, has been – and continues to be – subject to critical debate amongst scholars.

The purpose of this special issue is to critically examine aspects of community sports that relate to social inclusion. This opening paper aims to set the scene and provide a conceptual backdrop for the empirically grounded contributions to the special issue. We first discuss the notion of community sport and some key issues in community sports research. This is followed by an exploration of the concept of social inclusion and its relationship to community sport. We use this discussion to draw together key themes, issues and debates addressed in the collection of articles in this special issue. The final part of the article formulates some implications and directions for future research and practice.

Community sport and social inclusion: concepts and research

There exists a considerable body of academic research in the field of (community) sport and social inclusion. Scholars have explored this complex relationship through different perspectives (e.g. racial equality and human rights; Donnelly and Coakley 2002; Hylton and Totten 2013), and by focusing on one single or multiple dimensions of social inclusion (e.g. spatial, relational, functional and power; Bailey 2008). One important challenge that has emerged from this literature is the need to conceptualize sport-based interventions more clearly in terms of inputs (i.e. the used human, social, physical, cultural, political, economic resources), throughputs (i.e. what is being done with used resources and how it is done), outputs (i.e. what is being accomplished with used resources) and outcomes (i.e. to what concrete consequences have such accomplishments led for those involved) (e.g. Coalter 2007). Such an approach can potentially contribute to the development of more effective sport-for-inclusion interventions and provisions. And this by providing organizations, policymakers and practitioners with a more robust, theory-based understanding of how sport participation is related to various forms of personal, social and community development (Coakley 2011). However, one of the consequences of this approach is that research seems to adopt smaller-scale units of analysis (i.e. individuals and programmes), instead of broader units (i.e. communities, neighbourhoods and municipalities). A focus on the micro level makes it more difficult to identify and analyze historical patterns of social transformation and structural inequality, which can provide greater insight into the extent to which and ways in which community sport may contribute to improving the human condition of communities and individuals (Currie-Alder 2016, Haudenhuyse et al. 2018). In addition, understanding the impact of community sports is complicated by the lack of clarity about what concepts such as social inclusion and community sport actually mean in theory and in practice. It is to this conceptual challenge that we now turn.

Looking for conceptual clarity: community sport (re)defined

From an international perspective, there is a notable diversity and fluidity in the aims, organizational forms, pedagogies and target groups of community sport practices (Theeboom, De Knop, and Wylleman, 2008). In Belgium, for example, community sports imply all ‘alternative’ sport provisions that mainly lie outside the regular, voluntary-based sport club sector, such as neighbourhood sport programmes or after-school sport-based activities. In contrast, in countries like Australia (see the contribution by Jeanes et al. 2018 to this special issue) and the United Kingdom (see Evans et al. in press, in this special issue), community sports often includes (grassroots) voluntary-based sport clubs. From an international comparative perspective, these diverging definitions can cause confusion. One implication of the conceptual ambiguity is that organizations can claim to offer community sports, where the question needs to be raised if issues of inequality and social exclusion are being addressed at all. A first step towards dealing with this conceptual ambiguity may be to clearly define what we mean by ‘community’. Unfortunately, community is no less a contested concept than community sport. The British sociologist Gerard Delanty (2003, 3) refers to community as a concept that designates ‘both an idea about belonging and a particular social phenomenon, such as expressions of longing for community, the search for meaning and solidarity, and collective identities’. Delanty (2003) argues that communities, which are continuously created rather than primordial or static, cannot be simply equated with particular groups or places. He questions the classical tradition in sociology that views community as a basis for social inclusion or integration. Delanty writes:

This myth has been re-created by modern communitarianism which looks to community to provide what neither society, nor the state can provide, namely a normatively based kind of social integration rooted in associative principles of commitment to collective good. (Delanty, 2003, 192)

From this perspective, we can understand why community sport is often defined in opposition to state-led, mainstream sports provision. Such a juxtaposition is limiting, because it normalizes and legitimizes the exclusive nature of mainstream sport provisions. At the same time, it shifts the responsibility for addressing issues of social inclusion and exclusion to the (often under-resourced) community sport sector. Nonetheless, as will be shown, the articles in this special issue suggest that sports-based social movements within civil society can give rise to new expressions of community and associational life, in which people can discover common interests, develop collective identities and provide avenues for emancipation.

Rethinking social inclusion

Social inclusion has been a noteworthy theme in sport policy in several western countries in recent times (Fletcher 2014; McDonald 2005; Spaaij et al. 2014; Theeboom, Haudenhuyse, and De Knop 2010). Policies on inclusive sport are mostly shaped by a dual focus on, on the one hand, extending social rights and citizenship (i.e. through access to participation) and emphasizing various individual and collective benefits presumed to be associated with sport participation on the other hand (Coalter 2007). Social inclusion, as put forward in most public policies of sport, is an ideal that governments, policy makers and community leaders may pursue in order to prevent and mitigate the marginalization of particular social groups. Notwithstanding the concept’s popularity in sport policy, it seems that social inclusion as a concept is often ill-defined and interpreted differently (Glazzard 2011; Levitas 2005; Silver 2010). We share Lindsay’s observation that social inclusion ‘is not a simple, unambiguous concept’ (Lindsay 2003, 3) and that, as a concept, it has often been used to focus on notions of assimilation rather than representing a struggle for equality and social justice (Hodkinson 2012). One critique related to this concept is based on an underlying moral meta-narrative which assumes that social inclusion or integration, as the opposite of social exclusion, is inherently good and desirable (Hickey and Du Toit 2007).

Within the literature considering sport’s potential contribution to social inclusion, different, yet often overlapping conceptualizations of social inclusion can be found (Bailey 2008; Collins and Kay 2014; Spaaij et al. 2014). Social inclusion is furthermore often defined in relation to social exclusion, and as such remains under-defined (Haudenhuyse 2017). Social inclusion and exclusion are habitually talked about, rather uncritically, ‘diametrically opposed poles’, encouraging a perception that solutions to problems related to social exclusion are into promoting the inclusion of the socially excluded (Macdonald et al. 2012 cited in Haudenhuyse 2017). The question needs to be addressed if combatting social exclusion can effectively be tackled by promoting social inclusion? In other words, are promoting social inclusion and combatting social exclusion two sides of the same coin? We cannot unconditionally assume that groups that are excluded from society and its mainstream institutions (including sport), will simply and unidimensionally benefit from their inclusion in sport when society has excluded and marginalized them in t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction – Community sport and social inclusion: international perspectives
• Part 1 Practitioners’ perspectives on social inclusion
• Part 2 Processes and mechanisms leading to social inclusion and exclusion
• Part 3 Impacts and outcomes of community sport participation
• Index