Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners increasingly pay attention to sport and physical activity as a means and context for refugee wellbeing and integration, influenced by wider political and policy concerns about forced migration. Considering this growing scholarly and policy attention, it is timely to take stock of, and critically reflect on, recent developments in this field of research. This paper offers an integrative, critical review of the scientific literature on the topic. It critically synthesizes what is known about the sport and physical activity experiences of people with refugee and forced migrant backgrounds, and identifies key issues and directions for future research in this field. This review of contemporary academic literature comprises 83 publications derived from fourteen languages published between 1996 and 2019. It shows a substantial increase in the volume of published research on the topic in recent years (2017-2019). Published research is concentrated primarily in Western countries around the themes of health promotion, integration and social inclusion, and barriers and facilitators to participation in sport and physical activity. The findings foreground the use of policy categories, deficit approaches, and intersectionalities as three pressing challenges in this area of research. Based on this synthesis, the authors identify four research gaps that require attention in future research: the experiential (embodied emotional) dimensions of sport and physical activity, the need to decolonize research, the space for innovative methodologies, and research ethics.

The belief that participation in sport and physical activity assists the integration of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) migrants is prominent within sport policy and programming. Integration outcomes may be enhanced when the migrant develops facets of cultural capital that are valued by both the migrant and the destination country. This paper systematically examines the cultural capital of CALD migrants in the context of participation in sport and physical activity. Databases were searched for papers published in peer-reviewed journals between 1990 and 2016. A total of 3040 articles were identified and screened, and 45 papers were included in this review. Findings show that migrants' cultural capital can be both an asset to, and a source of exclusion from, sport participation. Sport and physical activity are sites where migrantspecific cultural capital is (re)produced, where new forms of cultural capital that are valued in the destination society are generated, and where cultural capital is negotiated in relation to the dominant culture. The authors conclude that the analytical lens of cultural capital enables an in-depth understanding of the interplay between migrant agency and structural constraints, and of integration as a two-way process of change and adaptation, in the context of sport and physical activity.

Australian policy makers and funding organisations have relied heavily on sport as a vehicle for achieving the goals of social cohesion and social inclusion. The generally accepted premise that sport includes individuals in larger social contexts, and in doing so creates positive social outcomes, remains largely untested and uncontested. This article considers the ways in which playing in an asylum seeker football team, located in Melbourne, Australia, facilitates both inclusive and exclusive experiences for its participants. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, life histories, and policy analysis, this article identifies the often-ignored importance of a sporting habitus and physical capital in individuals' experiences of playing. The success or failure of the asylum seeker team to foster social inclusion is somewhat tenuous as the logic of competition can create conditions counter to those that would be recognised as inclusive. Further, such programmes are faced with sustainability problems, as they are heavily reliant on individuals within the organisation and community to "make things happen". However, we suggest that for many men, the asylum seeker team provides an important site for the development and appreciation of 'poly-cultural' capital that contributes to forms of resilience and the achievement of other indicators of social inclusion.

This paper examines the usage of ‘race’ in high school physical education textbooks in Australia. In particular, it examines the concept of biological ‘race’ in connection with human performance in sport. DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. A content analysis of physical education textbooks in Australia suggests that they are sites that continue to perpetuate myths of ‘race’ and the ‘science’ related to it. As such the utilization of biological ‘race’ as a variable for athletic performance naturalizes embedded biases, is anti-scientific and is potentially indicative of other racist practices within education. Further this commonsense understanding of biological ‘race’ continues to develop uncritically and unchecked. University students in the fields of exercise science and physical education generally develop from students who excelled in high school physical education (PE). The power of curriculum and pedagogy result in the reproduction of biological ‘race’ that has become reified in the field of physical education.

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