Football for Inclusion: Examining the Pedagogic Rationalities and the Technologies of Solidarity of a Sports-Based Intervention in Sweden

Abstract

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.

Forming the association-like organisation: on civil society, welfare provision and sport as a means of social inclusion

“…Sport and civil society are today mobilised in webs and networks of welfare providers counteracting the situations and dynamics of social exclusion following increasing segregations and social inequalities, in Sweden and elsewhere (Coalter 2007;Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2017).…”

“…Today, the disadvantaged suburban areas of the Million Programme are talked about as Bareas of exclusion^ (Dahlstedt and Ekholm 2018), particularly, due to the areas evoking particular values and cultural expressions characterised by dependency on welfare, alienation, suspicion and political passivity (Davidson 2010). In this context, the young people of the suburb are seen as both the source of conflict and the possible solution to create solidarity: if they are formed or fostered in the right way, there is the opportunity of creating social solidarityotherwise, the risk is that the destructive spiral of exclusion may deepen (Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2017). Ambitions to counter segregation and to create more inclusive urban landscapes, has in the recent years primarily been based on cooperation between public, private and voluntary actors (Herz 2016;Kings 2011).…”

“…Focusing in particular on sport as a means of promoting social inclusion, there is furthermore a risk of social inclusion being seen as equivalent to adaptation and assimilation to specific norms and pre-defined ideals of the majority (Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2017;Forde et al 2015;Hylton 2011;Long et al 2014). From a social policy perspective, it can be highly problematic if interventions promoting social inclusion in practice involve strategies for assimilation where the social inclusion and participation of one group is based on the adaption to the other group, on the other group's terms (Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2017). Even though based on a problematic distinction (cf.…”

“…In spite of different backgrounds, experiences and personalities, when meeting the children, the leader personifies and, in a way, defines what is normal and desirable, according to which the children are expected to be fostered by participating in football (cf. Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2017). This means to be Ba decent fellow human being( excerpt 13), to contribute to a local community where everyone feels safe and where people can meet Bin a dark alley late at night without being in any danger^ (excerpt 14), and in that sense embodying community and solidarity.…”

“…In relation, welfare provision has been focusing not least on locally based social pedagogic interventions in suburban areas of exclusion (Dahlstedt and Ekholm 2018). Here, the roles of the welfare state and of civil society as well as the relations between them as divided sectors are spotlighted (Herz 2016;Villadsen 2008) with respect to countering conflict and tension and for promoting community, social cohesion and solidarity (Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2017).…”