Facilitating access to sports for people in poverty? A study on local social sports policy

Vandermeerschen, Hanne; Poppel, Marjolein van; Scheerder, Jeroen

doi:10.18352/jsi.448

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 18 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…To illustrate, in the Netherlands from the 1980s onwards, sport participation was no longer considered to be a key policy concern (Breedveld et al, 2011). Consequently, sport has increasingly been positioned as a solution to wicked problems in other domains, such as health, welfare, social integration and liveability (Bergsgard et al, 2007;Hoekman & Breedveld, 2013;Vandermeerschen et al, 2016). The second is reflected in the many uncontested assumptions within sport policy and the lack of any clear understanding of how sport policy impacts individuals and their behaviour, or society at large (Houlihan, 2005;Mansfield, 2016).…”

Section: Sociological Discourses On Sport Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sport policy practice and outcome: theoretical and empirical approaches

Hoekman

Scheerder

2021

European Journal for Sport and Society

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Active participation in sport is a leisure-time physical activity. People are free to decide for themselves whether to practice sport and what type of sport to get involved in. Sport participation has been relatively stable over the past decades, despite ambitions of governments on a European, national and local level to raise sport participation levels (European Commission, 2018;Rowe, 2015;. Although people manage their own leisure time, we must recognise that governments do seek to influence individuals' leisure activities (Bramham et al., 1993). For instance, states across Europe stimulate sport as a worthwhile active pastime, as reflected in the Sport for All Charter of the Council of Europe (2001). Herein, EU member states present a common policy agenda on sport, in particular the active involvement in sport. Raising levels of sport participation, especially among disadvantaged groups that are less likely to take part in sport, is a specific sport policy objective (Hoekman et al., 2011). Furthermore, governments have long taken an active role in providing sport facilities, where these are not offered by commercial parties. As such, ensuring access to sport facilities is considered a central element of effective sport participation policy (Nicholson et al., 2011).Government policy to stimulate sport and ensuring access to sport facilities relies on a socio-ecological rationale (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) in which the broader environment influences individual behaviour. The socioecological rationale to understand individual behaviour could also be utilised to understand sport policy-making (Hoekman et al., 2019). Regarding the policy-making process, Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) identified the field of sport as a configuration of positions comprising agents. Different stakeholders and environments play a role in the constitution of sport policy and sport practices. Policy is so to say a process with different actors and not a single decision isolated in time and context (Ham & Hill, 1993). To fully understand sport policy and its outcomes sport policy needs to be analysed within its broader, socio-cultural and socio-economic environment, similar to individual behaviour, and with an eye for the

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Section: Sociological Discourses On Sport Policymentioning

confidence: 99%