Communities in movement: football and basketball in transcultural spaces

Abstract

This is an introduction to the special issue "Communities in Movement: Football and Basketball in Transcultural Spaces". The articles focus on amateur basketball and football teams and leagues founded by Latin American migrants in the US and Brazil: Oaxacan basketball leagues in Los Angeles explored by Luis Escala Rabadán, Bolivian and Peruvian football leagues in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro investigated by Julia Haß and Stephanie Schütze, as well as Mexican and Latino football teams in New York studied by Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa. These articles explore the meaning of football and basketball in transcultural spaces, asking the following questions: How do migrants gain access to sports spaces in their places of arrival and how are these disputed? What impacts do they have on community building? How are they connected to work experiences and to other forms of social and cultural organization? How are different senses of belonging disputed in these spaces? How are they at the same time linked to processes of exclusion and discrimination?The forms of basketball and football that are widespread in most Latin American countries today were introduced at the end of the nineteenth century. 1 From the beginning, they were influenced by migratory movements. By the early twentieth century, football clubs existed in most Latin American metropolises, many of them founded by European immigrants. Basketball teams were established in many places at the same time, although this sport never reached the prevalence and mass media diffusion that developed in North America. 2 Today both ball games are very popular and have become more and more organized and institutionalized in Latin America -at professional as well as amateur levels.Recent anthropological research has shown that although they were imported from Europe and North America, sport cultures are dispersed and locally appropriated in in multiple ways (Kummels 2013; Ungruhe and Agergaard 2020). Sports are adapted to local settings through new rules, techniques, cultural and social significances, and then re-circulated to various regions around the world. Today we can observe diverse transculturalization processes of ball sports cultures that mainly result from current migration processes. There are versions of Latin American ball sports played in different parts of the world: for example, 'Fútsal and Fútbol Society' , Brazilian versions of football played in smaller teams