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Sports practices have been emphasised in social policy as a means of responding to social problems. In this article we analyse a sports-based social intervention performed in a "socially vulnerable" area in Sweden. We examine the formation of includable citizens in this project, based on interviews with representatives involved in the project. The material is analysed from a governmentality perspective, focusing on how problems and solutions are constructed as being constitutive of each other. The focus of the analysis is on social solidarity and inclusion as contemporary challenges, and how sport, specifically football, is highlighted as a way of creating social solidarity through a pedagogic rationality-football as a means of fostering citizens according to specific ideals of solidarity and inclusion. The formation of solidarity appears not as a mutual process whereby an integrated social collective is created, but rather as a process whereby those affected by exclusion are given the opportunity to individually adapt to a set of Swedish norms, and to linguistic and cultural skills, as a means of reaching the "inside". Inclusion seems to be possible as long as the "excluded" adapt to the "inside", which is made possible by the sports-based pedagogy. In conclusion, social problems and social tensions are spatially located in "the Area" of "the City", whose social policy, of which this sports-based intervention is a part, maintains rather than reforms the social order that creates these very tensions.

Absence from sport participation among girls from ethno-cultural minorities is often highlighted as an inclusion policy challenge. Based on 35 interviews with community sports coaches, managers and partners, we explore how the absence of girls is problematized in four Swedish sports-based interventions, focusing on how problems, as well as the means and the ends of social inclusion, are articulated. The girls are assessed as being in need of social change due to their alleged social exclusion. Absence is explained by “patriarchal norms” as well as by the introvert conduct of the girls themselves. Girls-only sports activities performed by female coaches as role models are described as a way for girls to gain social inclusion and to become emancipated from subjugating norms. In conclusion, participation in community sport is highlighted in discourse as crucial for adopting powers of emancipation. A similar discourse could be recognized elsewhere, inside and outside the realm of sport.

In this article, we explore the pedagogies of (de)liberation promoted in the sports-based intervention Midnight Football (MF), carried out in a suburban and socio-economically disadvantaged residential area in Sweden. Based on interviews with coaches and managers and on-site observations, we examine how socio-pedagogical rationalities and technologies are articulated in discourse and assumed to operate within the intervention, and how certain ideals of conduct and social inclusion are represented in discourse. The analysis is guided by a Foucauldian perspective on a variety of forms of power. It displays how disciplinary forms of spatial and temporal diversion and dislocation of youth from sites of risk and danger to sites of order and football are formed within MF, where non-authoritative relations between coaches and youth can be facilitated, underpinned by a pastoral form of benign care and guidance. This, in turn, according to the rationality, enables pedagogies of sublime guidance and governing through deliberative and motivational dialogues, supporting youth to conduct themselves and, within the frames of football, choose the right track in life, away from gangs and crime. Making active and responsible choices means not only opportunities for individual deliberation, salvation and social inclusion, but moreover, security in and for the locality, community and society. The analysis illustrates how discipline, pastoral power and technologies of empowerment and of the self are intertwined and constitutive of the government promoted. Notably, dialogues between coaches and participants do not focus on the socio-economic inequalities or the socio-political context of segregation among the youth; instead, salvation becomes a question of the mindset of the youth, legitimizing a pre-given socio-economic and socio-political order of social exclusion. Still, there is unfulfilled potential for critical pedagogy and (de)liberative dialogues for articulating the conditions for participation in sport and in society on the terms of the participating youth.

The role of sport and cultural practices in policy initiatives tends to be assessed in both cases in terms of their assumed social benefits. However, the areas of sport and culture are often understood separately in research. Through an analysis of interviews with key local policymakers and civil servants in two Swedish municipalities, the aim of this article is to explore how sport and culture are formed as means to promote social policy objectives regarding young people. In addition, we reflect on the political significance of this in relation to the development of local policy. The analysis demonstrates how a discourse of urban segregation and unequal opportunities underpins actions to mobilise non-participant and at-risk youth. This is achieved by establishing centres for sport and culture, and by enabling an educational approach which focuses on participation, empowerment and good citizenship. Reasons for mobilising practices involving culture and sport overlap, though each area of policy appears to be differently underpinned by discourses of enlightenment and conformity. Differences in emphasis between the discourses on sport and culture are discussed in relation to scientific discourse on the social utility of each policy area.