Un/making the British Asian Male Athlete: Race, Legibility and the State

Abstract

This article explores the social construction of the British Asian male sport star. It foregrounds an analysis of the racial state, primarily its biopolitical function in (re)affirming racialised models of citizenship and contemporary hierarchies of belonging. Drawing on conceptualisations of legibility, the article argues that this relationship between race and the state is necessary to understand the processes by which such athletes are made intelligible in the popular imagination. Empirically, the article focuses on the articulations, experiences and performativity of British Asian Muslim international cricketer, Moeen Ali, during the summer of 2014. It suggests that these examples reflect the contestation and de/legitimisation of various forms of social, cultural and political attachment and embodiment within the public sphere. The article argues that the extent to which athletes such as Ali are made il/legible in sport is linked inextricably to the way in which British Asians and British Muslims are made il/legible in society. Finally, the article considers the spaces, contexts and discourses within which British Asian athletes can(not) represent themselves; and the dominant forms of being, speaking and thinking with which they must conform to meet the requirements of elite sporting citizenship."Here to stay, here to play": Moeen Ali, governmentalities of nation and the contested politics of (sporting) citizenship "You're playing for England, Moeen Ali, not your religion" -Michael Henderson, This brief, indirect exchange between a white British journalist (of unknown religion) and a British Asian Muslim international cricketer took place during the summer of 2014. Its concision cannot obscure its resonance with a series of broader socio-political issues around national identity, religion, culture and citizenship -debates that, despite claims of a nation-state increasingly at ease with its diversity, refuse to wither in the sporting arena as much as elsewhere.This article uses Moeen Ali's articulations and experiences, and the performative statements made by/about him, to consider the contestation and de/legitimisation of various forms of social, cultural and political attachment and embodiment -ideological, material, stylistic, verbal -within the public sphere (Rootham et al 2015). Specifically, it addresses the ways that racialised corporeality is linked to discourses of national identity, citizenship, belonging and integration (Nagel and Staeheli 2008), together with the ways that the racial state attempts to narrow, or deny, social heterogeneities (Goldberg 2002). These themes underpin the substantive argument developed in the article: that an analysis of the relationship between race and the state is necessary to understand the processes by which the British Asian male athlete is made legible in the popular imagination.Beginning this article with the strained dialogue between Henderson and Ali may appear trite, yet the tension between the two positions is palpable. One standpoint perceives the relationsh...

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