Ethnic sorting in football A quantitative analysis of ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football Arend F. van Haaften
Ethnic sorting in football A quantitative analysis of ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football Arend F. van Haaften
Ethnic sorting in football. A quantitative analysis of ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football ISBN/EAN: 978-94-6421-930-2 Coverphoto: © 2019 Hilda van Welzen Print: Ipskamp Printing | www.ipskampprinting.nl Copyright © 2022 Arend F. van Haaften All rights reserved. No part of this dissertation may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any way or by any means without the prior permission of the author or, when applicable, of the publishers of the manuscripts that are based on this dissertation.
Ethnic sorting in football A quantitative analysis of ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football Etnische selectie in voetbal Een kwantitatieve analyse van etniciteit en lidmaatschap in het Nederlandse amateurvoetbal (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. H.R.B.M. Kummeling, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op dinsdag 20 december 2022 des middags te 2.15 uur door Arend Frederik van Haaften geboren op 16 november 1990 te Dordrecht
Promotoren: Prof. dr. M. van Bottenburg Prof. dr. M.A.P. Bovens Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. dr. G.B.M. Engbersen Prof. dr. E. Knies Prof. dr. R.F.J. Spaaij Prof. dr. F.A. van Tubergen Prof. dr. M. Verkuyten Deze publicatie maakt deel uit van het project ‘The end of membership as we know it? Organized sports and sustainable social ties’ (met projectnummer 32898-002) van het onderzoeksprogramma Sport dat (mede) is gefinancierd door de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO).
Contents Chapter 1 - Ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football 9 1.1 Organized sports and ethnicity 9 1.2 Aims and research question 11 1.3 Social and scientific relevance 13 1.4 Methodological approach 14 1.5 Outline of the study 15 Chapter 2 - Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs 19 2.1 Amateur football: a reflection of society? 19 2.2 Two perspectives on ethnic differences in sports participation 21 2.3 Methodology 26 2.4 Results 29 2.5 Conclusions and discussion 39 Chapter 3 - Do birds of a feather play football together? 49 3.1 Sports clubs: sites for interethnic mixing? 49 3.2 Theoretical assumptions and expectations 51 3.3 Methodology 58 3.4 Results 61 3.5 Conclusions and discussion 69 Chapter 4 - Does ethnic heterogeneity of clubs affect member dropout? 77 4.1 Heterogeneity and tie-dissolution 77 4.2 Three mechanisms that link ethnic heterogeneity to member dropout 78 4.3 Methodology 86 4.4 Results 89 4.5 Conclusions and discussion 95 Chapter 5 - Off to greener pitches? 103 5.1 Exploring the relationship between member transfers and club composition 103 5.2 Competition over members in social space: an ecological model of affiliation 104 5.3 Methodology 109 5.4 Results 110
5.5 Conclusions and discussion 115 Chapter 6 - Ethnicity matters 119 6.1 Main findings 120 6.2 Theoretical considerations 123 6.3 Methodological strengths and limitations 127 6.4 Social implications 129 6.5 Lessons and avenues for further research 133 6.6 Closing remarks 135 Appendix A - List of countries 141 Appendix B - Data management 143 Summary 145 Samenvatting 149 About the author 155 Dankwoord 157
Manuscripts based on this dissertation Chapter 2: Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs Van Haaften, A. F. (2019). Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs. European Journal for Sport and Society, 16(4), 301–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2019.1693144 Chapter 3: Do birds of a feather play football together? Van Haaften, A. F. (2019). Do birds of a feather play football together? A study on ethnic segregation in Dutch amateur football. European Journal for Sport and Society, 16(2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2019.1620411 Chapter 4: Does ethnic heterogeneity of clubs affect member dropout? Van Haaften, A. F. Does ethnic heterogeneity of voluntary associations affect member dropout? The case of amateur football clubs in the Netherlands. To be submitted for publication
CHAPTER 1 Ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football 1.1 Organized sports and ethnicity Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. (…) Sport can create hope where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination. Sports is the game of lovers. (Mandela, 2000) Organized sport as an ethnic integrator South Africa’s unlikely 1995 Rugby World Cup win brought a strongly racially divided nation closer together. This success story is perhaps one of the most appealing examples of the highly popular belief that sports activities are particularly effective at bringing distant ethnic groups closer together. Since then, the United Nations, together with sports organizations, NGOs, and governments have initiated a wide array of programs across the world which seek to harness the supposed ethnic integrative potential of sports. Under the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ banner, these interventions have been predominately directed at low- or middle-income countries such as Zimbabwe, Iraq or BosniaHerzegovina. High income countries such as the Netherlands have strongly focused on the integrative potential of sports as well (Cremers & Elling, 2020; Krouwel et al., 2006). An important reason for this is that due to ongoing immigration, the populations of many countries have become substantially more ethnically heterogeneous over the last few decades. This has led to increasing pressures on governments to ‘manage’ the ethnic differences between citizens and to find ways to maintain or strengthen social cohesion in an ever-diversifying society (Spaaij, 2013). Echoing Allport’s (1954) intergroup contact theory, a primary strategy of
10 Ethnic sorting in football achieving this is to stimulate positive and durable contact experiences between individuals from different ethnic backgrounds. Consequently, policy makers have been highly interested in social settings which are suitable for interethnic mixing and socializing. The implicit or explicit assumption in Dutch sports policies is that sports clubs can and in fact should play an important role in this. Not only do these clubs revolve around a shared activity which is believed to already cut across ethnic boundaries, but they are also by far the most popular type of civil society organization in the country, therefore acting as primary social foci for the formation and maintenance of ties with others. This is well illustrated by the fact that roughly a quarter of the total Dutch population is a member of a sports club and consequently clubs provide the settings where millions of citizens meet each other in these setting on a weekly basis. Some evidence suggests that organized sports do indeed have a promising potential when it comes to interethnic mixing. Members or ex-members of sports clubs tend to have more contact with, and have more trust in people with different ethnic backgrounds than non-members (Van der Meulen, 2010), and participation in organized sports can go hand in hand with increased knowledge and understanding of one’s ethnic outgroup and interethnic friendships (Janssens et al., 2010; Verweel et al., 2005). These effects, however, seem to be relatively modest in nature. Moreover, there is also reason to believe that ethnicity acts as a social divider in organized sports, which in turn would put limits on or even problematize the bridging function sports clubs are expected to fulfil. Ethnicity as a social divider in organized sport Despite its attractiveness, the use of sports clubs as ethnic integrators has been met with critical scrutiny. Evidence which substantiates the integrative function of sports remains scarce and some studies show that ethnic background itself can have an important role in diverging sports interests, participation rates and experiences of individuals. Firstly, while it may be true that organized sports are relatively accessible in comparison to other social domains, a consistent finding in research on sports participation and ethnicity is that ethnic minorities tend to be substantially underrepresented in organized sports. Secondly, people with different ethnic backgrounds do not necessarily gravitate to the same type of sports. Janssens et al. (2010) show that ethnic groups can have strongly diverging ‘sport profiles’,
Chapter 1. Ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football 11 which in turn constrain the opportunities for mixing through organized sports. Additionally, sports may themselves be used by participants as an ethnic marker. For example, Allison (1982) suggests that ethnic minorities in the United States participate in sports in a way that fits and reinforces their particular ethnic identities rather than suppressing them. Thirdly, organized sports may also act as arenas for interethnic tensions and conflict. When questioned, ten percent of players in sports clubs reported to have either experienced of witnessed discrimination based on skin colour, culture or religion (Schipper-van Veldhoven & Steenbergen, 2015). Additionally, studies by Van Slobbe (2019) and Krouwel et al. (2006) have demonstrated that ethnic differences can provide a basis for aggression or even violence within and between sports clubs. Furthermore, an extensive body of literature has time and time again affirmed what has become known as the homophily principle. This principle dictates that people who are similar are far more likely to form and maintain ties with each other, especially with regard to ethnic background (McPherson et al., 2001). Given that sports clubs are voluntary associations and homophily seems to have an especially pronounced effect on membership ties in civil society (McPherson et al., 2001), there is strong reason to believe that ethnic background at least partly acts as a social fault line in organized sports. Sports clubs may thus not be such unproblematic sites for interethnic mixing after all. Ethnic groups can experience barriers to participate in organized sports, and ethnic diversity in clubs, especially when forced, may put memberships under strain, resulting in weaker and more fleeting ties. This can have adverse consequences for sports clubs because they ultimately depend heavily on members’ willingness to continuously invest time and resources in the organization. 1.2 Aims and research question Up until now, researchers have predominantly studied the interrelations between ethnic background and sports club membership qualitatively. This has yielded rich and valuable insights in, for example, how in certain contexts ethnicity may shape members’ experiences and relations, or how sports clubs may deal with the inclusion or exclusion of members with different backgrounds. A limited number of quantitative studies have explored ethnic differences in sports participation and
12 Ethnic sorting in football membership rates – often on the basis of survey data – but these do not account for members’ respective club ties. Consequently, little is still known about how ethnic background is related to and impacts membership ties structurally. One major cause of this lacuna is the extensive and relatively complex data that are required. Namely, to truly study the relationship between ethnic background and club membership one needs to create a comprehensive overview of not only the membership base and members’ ethnic backgrounds - which is a challenge in itself - but also of all their respective club memberships. Additionally, to study anything at all, these data also need to be collected on a sport which enjoys a high popularity among a wide array of ethnic groups. When it comes to universal popularity, few if any sports can trump football. Virtually all over the world, football has a strong foothold in the organized sports domain and especially in many European countries football is unrivalled in terms of players and club memberships. The Netherlands is a case in point. With well over one million members spread over nearly three thousand clubs, no other type of sports club or civil society organization comes close to the pervasiveness of amateur football clubs in the social life of Dutch citizens. Amateur football clubs also seem to exert a strong appeal towards minority groups in the Netherlands. Evidence suggests they tend to rank football amongst the highest in terms of interest. Many clubs, particularly in urban areas, tend to have substantial shares of members with migrant backgrounds, which in some cases make up the whole member population. While we know many ethnic minorities find their way into amateur football clubs, the extent and way in which this happens, and its consequences for membership ties, so far have remained unknown. Luckily, over time, the quality and amount of membership data the Royal Dutch Football Association keeps, have significantly improved. Additionally, data on ethnic background in the Netherlands are well kept and accessible for research purposes. By combining these data, it has now become possible to gain a comprehensive and longitudinal overview of virtually all memberships of amateur football clubs and the ethnic backgrounds of their members. Consequently, this study seeks to combine these data and gain a better understanding of how ethnic background and membership are structurally related in the highly relevant context of Dutch amateur football. With this aim, I have formulated the following main research question of this dissertation:
Chapter 1. Ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football 13 What is the impact of ethnic background on membership ties to Dutch football clubs? 1.3 Social and scientific relevance Answering the main research question of this dissertation can contribute to social practice and scientific literature in a number of ways. Firstly, the relationship between ethnicity and sport has so far predominantly been explored through the lens of sports participation. While sport participation figures can give us an important overview of the distribution of organized sports preferences and/or opportunities across ethnic groups, they tell us relatively little about how ethnic background relates to the social ties that sustain organized sports. As countries continue to diversify along ethnic lines and policy makers or practitioners also aim to use sports clubs as sites for interethnic mixing and tie-formation, it becomes paramount to gain a more intricate understanding of its potential consequences for sports club membership and the organized sports domain as a whole. This holds especially true for European countries such as the Netherlands in which organized sports form such an intricate part of the national sports infrastructure and thus act as a key enabler of sports participation within the general populace. Consequently, by delving deeper into the relationship between ethnic background and membership ties to amateur football clubs, this study can help to inform decision-making processes in both government and sports organizations and contribute to the development of effective and realistic policies. Secondly, outside the domain of organized sports, the interrelations between social markers and membership have been an important topic of sociological inquiry in the past, most notably by McPherson and colleagues. Their research and ideas suggest that the sociodemographic composition of an area and voluntary associations themselves can have important consequences for who is socially connected to whom through membership ties. At the centre of this influence lies the aforementioned homophily principle, which dictates that similar people are much more likely to form and maintain ties. McPherson and colleagues have posited that homophilic tie-formation is known to be especially pronounced regarding ethnicity. However, up to now, surprisingly little research exists which has studied that effect of ethnic homophily on associational membership. This
14 Ethnic sorting in football study will help to fill this gap by explicitly studying how ethnic background relates to membership of the Netherlands’ most popular and numerous voluntary association. Thirdly, this study adds to a broader sociological debate on the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on social cohesion. When Putnam in 2007 posited that mutual ethnic differences within a population erode sociability and lead to ‘hunkering down’ behaviour, this sparked a lively scholarly and political discussion on the social consequences of the ethnic differentiation of European countries and the United States. While some scholars have argued that the effect suggested by Putnam is an artifact of cultural differences (Abascal & Baldassarri, 2015), and yet others have suggested that it is an American exception (Van der Meer & Tolsma, 2014), several recent studies have demonstrated that ethnic heterogeneity may indeed undermine aspects of social cohesion (Dinesen et al., 2020; Jennissen et al., 2018). Most research on this topic so far has focused on neighbourhood residency. This may partly explain why findings have been mixed. Not only is the relationship between ethnic heterogeneity and social cohesion in neighbourhoods at risk to be obfuscated by other factors such as economic deprivation or crime, but people can have widely different ideas about what their neighbourhood is and who lives in it. Koopmans et al. (2015) have therefore suggested that the relationship between ethnic heterogeneity and social cohesion is best studied in concrete social settings in which people have frequent face to face contact. From this point of view the study of amateur football clubs has a lot to offer. Not only are they an organization through which so many Dutch citizens meet and interact with one another, but these interactions are also voluntary in nature. This makes the effects of ethnic heterogeneity on membership ties much easier to observe, compared to more constrained contexts such as professional organization or schools. 1.4 Methodological approach Following from the aims and central research question, this study employs a quantitative research design. The main objective of this design is to map the Dutch citizens’ membership ties to amateur football clubs and relate them to their ethnic backgrounds. For this purpose, the Royal Dutch Football Association has provided me under strict conditions of use with anonymized individual
Chapter 1. Ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football 15 membership data of all registered amateur football clubs in Netherlands for ten playing seasons starting in 2005 and ending in 2015. These data provide a longitudinal overview of roughly 2.2 million memberships. In addition to individual club memberships, these data contained individual members’ gender, date of birth and address. To determine additional social characteristics of members, the membership data have been matched with data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Statistics Netherlands keeps extensive individual level data of the Dutch population on a very wide range of characteristics, such as ethnic background and income. By using the gender, date of birth and six-digit postal code of individual members provided by the Royal Dutch Football Association, around 94 percent of the roughly 2.2 million memberships in the original data set were successfully matched with individual data from the Statistics Netherlands. Consequently, this procedure has resulted in a highly comprehensive and anonymized dataset of members of Dutch voluntary football clubs and their characteristics between the years 2005 and 2015. More information on the management of these data can be found in Appendix B. Modifications and selections of the data prior to the empirical analyses are discussed in the respective four empirical chapters, of which an outline is presented below. 1.5 Outline of the study The remainder of this dissertation consists of four empirical chapters and a final chapter in which the main findings of the study are summarized and discussed. In the empirical chapters the main research question is broken down into four distinct research questions which build onto one another. In the first of these chapters, chapter 2, I will start with an exploration of the distribution of ethnic backgrounds in amateur football. While explorations in the past have indicated that citizens with migrants tend to be underrepresented in organized sports, very little is known of the actual ethnic compositions of member populations and how they have evolved over time. Yet this knowledge forms a crucial building block to gain a clearer picture of the way ethnic differentiation and club membership are interrelated. Consequently, in the next chapter I aim to answer the following research question: ‘To what extent is Dutch amateur football an ethnic reflection
16 Ethnic sorting in football of the Dutch population and what factors best explain differences in participation between ethnic groups?’ In chapter 3, the analysis shifts from the composition of the total member population to that of the clubs which individuals are members of. It is unlikely that clubs form a perfect reflection of the total membership population, which will directly limit the opportunities for ethnic mixing. Hence, in this chapter I further explore the ethnic compositions of Dutch amateur football clubs and the degree in which ethnic groups are segregated from one another by posing the following research question: ‘To what extent and in what way are ethnic groups within the Netherlands unequally distributed over amateur football clubs?’ In chapter 4, I delve deeper into the question of whether or not the membership of individuals is in fact dependent on the ethnic composition of amateur football clubs. While citizens may or may not sort themselves unequally over amateur football clubs, the ethnic composition could also affect the membership experience and members’ willingness to prolong their membership at a club. If so, difference and changes in ethnic compositions of clubs may have important consequences for clubs’ sustainability over time, while also shedding new light on ethnic differences in membership rates. This is explored using the following research question: ‘To what extent does the ethnic heterogeneity of amateur football clubs affect member dropout?’ In chapter 5, the last empirical chapter of this dissertation, I look at the flow of members between clubs. It is questioned whether or not ethnic compositions of clubs play a role when members change clubs and by extension, whether or not clubs compete with one another based on the ethnic background of their members. For this purpose, I used the following research question: ‘To what extent are transfers of members between clubs related to differences between clubs’ ethnic compositions?’ This dissertation ends with a concluding chapter in which I summarize the main findings of the study, discuss its theoretical and social implications, mark several methodological strengths and weaknesses of my research and highlight avenues for further research.
Chapter 1. Ethnicity and membership in Dutch amateur football 17 References Abascal, M., & Baldassarri, D. (2015). Love thy neighbor? Ethnoracial diversity and trust reexamined. American Journal of Sociology, 121(3), 722–782. https://doi.org/10.1086/683144 Allport, G.W. (1954) The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley. Allison, M. T. (1982). Sport, ethnicity, and assimilation. Quest, 34(2), 165–175. https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.1982.10483775 Cremers, R., & Elling, A. (2020). ‘Onze vereniging staat open voor iedereen’: betekenisgeving aan inclusie van etnische minderheden door Utrechtse sportaanbieders [‘Our association is open for everyone’: Meaning making of inclusion of ethnic minorities by sports organizations in Utrecht]. The Mulier Institute. Dinesen, P. T., Schaeffer, M., & Sønderskov, K. M. (2020). Ethnic diversity and social trust: A narrative and meta-analytical review. Annual Review of Political Science, 23(1), 441–465. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-052918-020708 Janssens, J., Elling, A., & Verweel, P. (2010). De sport: een uitgelezen ontmoetingsplaats voor iedereen [Sports: A perfect meeting place for everybody]? In F. Kemper, K. Breedveld, A. Elling, R.H.A Hoekman & E. Wisse (Eds.), Samenspel (pp. 101-128). Netherlands Institute for Sport and Physical Activity Jennissen, R., Engbersen, G., Bokhorst, M., & Bovens, M. (2018) De nieuwe verscheidenheid. Toenemende diversiteit naar herkomst in Nederland [The new diversity. Increased ethnic heterogeneity in the Netherlands]. The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy. Koopmans, R., Lancee, B., & Schaeffer, M. (2015). Ethnic diversity in diverse societies: An introduction. In R. Koopmans, B. Lancee, & M. Schaeffer (Eds.), Social cohesion and immigration in Europe and North America: Mechanisms, conditions, and causality (pp. 1-19). Routledge. Krouwel, A., Boonstra, N., Duyvendak, J. W., & Veldboer, L. (2006). A good sport? Research into the capacity of recreational sport to integrate Dutch minorities. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 41(2), 165–180. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690206075419
18 Ethnic sorting in football Mandela Foundation. http://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches/pub_view.asp?pg=item&ItemID=N MS1148&txtstr=sport%20has%20the%20power%20to%20change Meer, T. van der, & Tolsma, J. (2014). Ethnic diversity and its effects on social cohesion. Annual Review of Sociology, 40(1), 459–478. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043309 Meulen, R. van der (2010). ‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder': Vriendschappen, kennissenkringen en interetnisch vertrouwen [‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder’: Friendships, circles of acquaintances and interethnic trust]. In F. Kemper, K. Breedveld, A. Elling, R.H.A Hoekman & E. Wisse (Eds.), Samenspel (pp. 189–213). Netherlands Institute for Sport and Physical Activity McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 415– 444. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415 Spaaij, R. (2013). Sport, social cohesion and community building: Managing the nexus. In P. Leisink, P. Boselie, M. van Bottenburg & D.M. Hosking (Eds.), Managing Social Issues (pp. 107-125). Edward Elgar. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781781006962.00015 Schipper-van Veldhoven, N. & Steenbergen, J. (2015) Sport en (on)gewenst gedrag [Sports and (un)desirable behaviour]. In A. Tiessen-Raaphorst (Ed.), Rapportage Sport 2014 (pp. 269–283). The Netherlands Institute for Social Research. Van Slobbe, M. (2019). Onder Ons: De overheid en het onvermogen om integratie af te dwingen bij voetbalclubs [Among Ourselves: Government and the inability to enforce integration in football clubs]. [Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University]. Parthenon. Verweel, P., Janssens, J. and Roques, C. (2005). Kleurrijke zuilen: Over de ontwikkeling van sociaal kapitaal door allochtonen in eigen en gemengde sportverenigingen [Colourful pillars: On the development of social capital by immigrants in separate and mixed sports clubs]. Vrijetijdsstudies, 23(4), 7–22. Mandela, N. (2000). Speech by Nelson Mandela at the Inaugural Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award, Monaco 2000 [Speech transcript]. Nelson
CHAPTER 2 Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs 2.1 Amateur football: a reflection of society? Over the past decades, many affluent democracies have rapidly diversified along ethnic lines due to immigration, a trend which is only expected to continue in the future. To ensure cohesion between citizens in light of these new differences, policy makers have increasingly put their faith in sports and especially cluborganized sports activities (Elling, De Knop, & Knoppers, 2001; Krouwel, Boonstra, Duyvendak, & Veldboer, 2006; Vermeulen & Verweel, 2009). The instrumental use of sports for addressing ethnic differences by policy makers can be understood as part of the emergence of a much wider, global discourse underpinning the proliferation of the ‘Sport for development and peace’ (SDP) sector since the turn of the century (Giulianotti, 2011; Kidd, 2008). Central to this discourse is the representation of sports as an inherently open and integrative social domain, wherein the entry and movement of both people and their associated capital are largely unaffected by social structure, especially ethnic background. Various sport sociological scholars (Coakley, 2009; Collins, 2014; Giulianotti, 2016; Jarvie, 1991) have resisted this popular conceptualization of sports. They argue that sports participants are not disconnected from, but instead embedded within a social world marked by difference, barriers, inequalities, and conflict, making the sports domain much less of the neutral and level playing field policy makers believe or hope it to be. Ethnic disparities in sports participation are a case in point. Multiple studies have shown that despite the democratization of sports, sports participation still tends to be ethnically stratified. In general, ethnic minorities tend to be less active in sports than their majority counterparts and they are less likely to participate in club-organized sports (Bottenburg, Rijnen, & Sterkenburg, 2005; Coumans,
20 Ethnic sorting in football 2015; Higgins & Dale, 2013; Johnston, Delva, & O’Malley, 2007; Nielsen, Hermansen, Bugge, Dencker, & Andersen, 2013; Stamatakis & Chaudhury, 2008; Vogels, 2014; Wijtzes et al., 2014). This gap limits the potential of sports as a shared activity to bring people with various ethnic backgrounds together. Furthermore, it leads to an unequal ethnic distribution of the potential additional benefits that sports activities bring beyond leisure, such as opportunities for social capital formation (Janssens & Verweel, 2014) and positive (indirect) effects on health (Basterfield et al., 2015; Hardie Murphy, Rowe, & Woods, 2016; Pate, Trost, Levin, & Dowda, 2000). There appears to be a lack of clarity about the reasons for the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in sports. Authors taking a critical approach have stressed the prevalence of exclusionary factors, most notably the unequal ethnic distribution of resources and discrimination, which favour participation of the dominant ethnic group over minority groups (Collins, 2014; Elling & Claringbould, 2005). However, it remains difficult to generalize findings from studies which typically use qualitative methods and rely on specific cases or limited data. Moreover, as ethnicity also seems to be related to differing sports participation interests (Elling & Knoppers, 2005; Harrison, Lee, & Belcher, 1999), it becomes challenging to disentangle processes of exclusion from ethnic differences in preferences. Furthermore, most quantitative studies on ethnic sports participation so far have suffered from a few drawbacks, further complicating matters. Firstly, categorizations used for ethnic groups tend to be relatively few and broad. As experiences and positions within countries can vary substantially between ethnic groups, frequently used terms such as ‘immigrant background’ or ‘non-white’ may obscure substantial differences. Secondly, the use of longitudinal data has been scarce up until now. This means that we know relatively little about how time and demographic change are related to ethnic differences in sport participation. Thirdly, definitions of sports participation are quite often rather general. As interest and participation of ethnic groups could vary substantially between different types of sports, between popular and less popular sports, individual and team sports, and organized and non-organized sports, we would benefit from more specific accounts of ethnic sports participation. A distinctive characteristic of the sports domain in Europe is its strong reliance on a network of sports clubs and overarching federations (Bottenburg et al., 2005). With both Europe’s highest estimated share of sports activities taking
Chapter 2. Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs 21 place within the context of sports clubs (23%), and the highest percentage of citizens who are a member of sports clubs (27%), the Netherlands serves as a prime example of organizing sports in this way (Eurobarometer, 2014). This chapter zooms in on the most expansive organized sport in the Netherlands, namely amateur football. With well over one million members of amateur football clubs, it is hard to overemphasize the social significance of recreational football for Dutch citizens. The research question I have formulated for the purpose of this chapter is twofold: To what extent is Dutch amateur football an ethnic reflection of the Dutch population and what factors best explain differences in participation between ethnic groups? The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. In the section below, I will introduce two different theoretical perspectives on how to understand ethnic differences in participation in voluntary activities. These are subsequently broken down into three key explanations for the potential differences in ethnic group’s representation in Dutch amateur football. Afterwards, in the methodological section, I provide insight in the data and measures I have used. In the third section I will present the results of this study and the extent to which these match the expectations formulated earlier. Finally, the chapter concludes with a summary of the main findings and a discussion of their implications. 2.2 Two perspectives on ethnic differences in sports participation Ethnic disparities in leisure activities have enjoyed a fair share of academic interest for four decades. In a study on differences in outdoor recreation participation between Whites and African Americans, Washburne (1978) proposed an influential framework of two opposing theoretical perspectives to account for the African Americans’ under-participation. The first perspective is known as the marginality perspective. This perspective assumes that ethnic disparities in leisure participation and behaviour are primarily a result of ethnic inequality and the inferior position of ethnic
22 Ethnic sorting in football minorities. Consequently, differences between ethnic groups are a result of experienced constraints on their respectively ability to gain access to and join in on leisure activities. The second perspective has been described as the subcultural perspective1. From this perspective it is assumed that ethnic groups do not experience and hold the same socialization patterns, cultural values and norms, and, consequentially, develop diverging cultural tastes and behaviours which translate to different participation rates. Ethnic marginality Ethnic Differences in Resources Historically, the central focus of the ethnic marginality perspective has been on differences between socioeconomic resources. Like most activities, participation in sports, especially when organized within clubs, requires a certain amount of resources at one’s disposal. The relative disadvantaged positions of ethnic minority members might therefore act as a barrier to gain access to the sports domain (Collins, 2014; Wiertz, 2016). Earlier research suggests that this indeed might be the case. Multiple studies show that part of the difference in participation between ethnic minority and majority groups coincides with differences in socioeconomic status (Higgins & Dale, 2013; Johnston et al., 2007; Wijtzes et al., 2014). While this does not necessarily imply a casual mechanism, it seems plausible that participation in sports, especially organized competitive sports like amateur football, requires a financial investment in terms of sports clothing, membership fees and transportation, which ethnic minorities on average might be less likely to meet. In addition to economic resources, a lack of appropriate cultural resources might also act as a barrier for participation. An insufficient mastery of the language might be the most apparent example, but Elling and Claringbould (2005) and Vogels (2014) have suggested that there might be more subtle mechanisms at play, particularly relevant for club organised sports. For instance, ethnic minority members may be less familiar and comfortable with the sports club culture(s) in the Netherlands than ethnically Dutch individuals are. A lack of this tacit knowledge might discourage or prevent a part of ethnic minority 1 The original name is ethnicity perspective. Later, subcultural perspective or hypothesis are also used (Floyd, Shinew, McGuire, & Noe, 1994), which are more fitting and clearer descriptions.
Chapter 2. Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs 23 members to effectively access a sports organization and become or stay on as a member, regardless of their financial resources. If ethnic differences in economic and cultural resources would have a substantial impact on amateur football club participation, we would expect the participation of various ethnic groups to be stratified accordingly. This would mean that ethnic groups which tend to have less economic and/or cultural resources will show relatively low participation rates in amateur football. Furthermore, assimilation theory would lead us to expect that participation of ethnic minority groups, especially in the case of relatively disadvantaged groups, will rise over time and between subsequent generations as a result of their socioeconomic and cultural integration in the host society (Alba & Nee, 1997; Vogels, 2014). This leads to the first two expectations for this chapter: E1: Ethnic minority groups with relatively few economic or cultural resources will be underrepresented in amateur football compared to ethnic groups with more economic or cultural resources. E2: Ethnic minority participation in amateur football will increase over time due to the accumulation of economic and cultural resources. Ethnic prejudice and discrimination Even when ethnic minority groups might possess the resources necessary to participate in leisure activities they might be constrained in their ability to do so because of ethnic prejudice and discriminatory practices.2 Prejudice is something many individuals belonging to ethnic minorities face and which, through experiences with discrimination or anticipation thereof, acts as a barrier or deterrent to participation in various social spheres, including the domain of sports (Stodolska & Floyd, 2016). While sports settings on average rank relatively low in terms of places where Dutch citizens report unwanted behaviour, including discrimination, amateur football clubs are overrepresented (Schipper-van Veldhoven & Steenbergen, 2014). Furthermore, there have been multiple known examples of clubs showing inclinations to formally exclude (certain) ethnic minorities from membership. While these inclinations were not formalized, they 2 Discrimination is less often directly associated with the marginality perspective. However, as a form of ethnic disadvantage and constraint on participation it fits with its underlying assumptions.
24 Ethnic sorting in football do hint towards the existence of ethnic prejudice in amateur football, which could be accompanied by informal forms of discrimination. Not all ethnic minority groups, however, face prejudice to the same extent. Therefore, the likelihood of being subjected to discrimination likely varies per group. Studies on ethic social distance in the Netherlands revealed a clear hierarchy in the desirability of ethnic groups. Ethnically Dutch are seen as the most desirable group, followed by Northern European, Southern European, ethnic minorities from former Dutch colonies such as Suriname, and predominantly Muslim groups, most notably Turkish and Moroccan citizens at the bottom as least desirable group (Verkuyten, Hagendoorn, & Masson, 1996). Additionally, Hagendoorn and Sniderman (2001) concluded that for this latter group, native Dutch tend to view people with Moroccan backgrounds more negatively than persons with a Turkish background. Later studies indicate that this hierarchy seems to persist over time (Huijnk & Andriessen, 2016). However, in the last two decades, a large group of Middle and Eastern Europeans have migrated to the Netherlands. While it is difficult to exactly pinpoint where they would fall within the ethnic hierarchy in the Netherlands outlined here, it seems that migrants from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, who form the biggest share of this group, also face substantial prejudice from the ethnically Dutch population (Dagevos & Gijsberts, 2013). Data on self-reported experiences of discrimination by ethnic minorities in the Netherlands largely suggests the same ethnic hierarchy (Andriessen, Fernee, & Wittebrood, 2014). Belonging to a predominately Muslim ethnic minority, such as Turkish and Moroccan citizens, bears the greatest risk of discrimination, while having darker skin3, as in citizens of former Dutch colonies, seems less associated with being a target of discrimination. Middle and Eastern European 3 An anonymous reviewer pointed towards the possibility of darker skin not being a vulnerability for exclusion but also as a potential marker for active and concentrated recruitment efforts. Studies in the past have indeed pointed to the relation between blackness, and emphasis on physicality and natural ability in sports contexts, potentially leading to selective demand and overrepresentation (see for example Rodriguez and George, 2018). In the Dutch context, Van Sterkenburg, Knoppers & De Leeuw (2012) find an emphasis on the physicality - positive or negative - of football players with Surinamese backgrounds in Dutch sports commentary, but not for players with Antillean backgrounds, who fall in the same ex-colonial ‘Black’ category. Moreover, in the Dutch organized sports system, very little if any actual ‘recruiting’ is done on the amateur level and joining mainly happens on a strictly voluntary basis through network ties. If selective recruitment based on natural ability exists within the Dutch context, it is more likely to happen during scouting of amateur players by professional clubs and within the development of professional football careers.
Chapter 2. Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs 25 individuals are ranked lower than Surinamese and Antilleans with regards to experiencing discrimination. Consequently, in a club sport dominated by ethnically Dutch members, we might find club cultures which primarily revolve around the ethnic Dutch group and are potentially less accommodating or sometimes even hostile towards minorities (see for example Van Slobbe, Vermeulen & Koster, 2013) positioned lower in the hierarchy. If this is the case, I would expect that: E3: Participation of predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in amateur football will be relatively low. E4: Participation of citizens with a postcolonial background, dark skin or Middle and Eastern European background in voluntary sports football clubs will be lower than ethnically Dutch, but higher than predominantly Muslim ethnic groups. Ethnic subcultures: ethnic differences in preferences and tastes While the previous two explanations from a marginality perspective focused on exclusionary processes which could affect ethnic participation in sport, it would be naive to assume that ethnic groups all show an equal interest in participating in sports in general, or certain sports in particular. Key to the subcultural perspective is that ethnic groups may differ in their socialization and the cultural value, tastes and behaviours they acquire and demonstrate. Consequently, ethnic differences in sports participation may occur as a result of diverging preferences. Firstly, the family unit is likely to be an important instigator of this process. Not only are families considered to be a crucial agent in the sport socialization of young individuals with long lasting effects (Kay, 2004; Birchwood, Roberts & Pollock, 2008; Wheeler, 2012), but it is also seen as a key driver behind ethnic segregation of social networks due to its highly ethnic homogeneous composition (McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001). Because football is not as popular and developed as a recreational sport in every part of the world, ethnic groups will likely vary substantially in the amount to which they can draw on family members’ experiences and are socialized by them. As such, it seems reasonable to expect that ethnic groups with backgrounds from countries in which amateur football is relatively underdeveloped are less likely to be interested to participate in an amateur football club, resulting in lower participation rates.
26 Ethnic sorting in football Secondly, Harrison (2001) suggests that athletic success of ethnic groups in specific sports can foster so-called ‘positive self-stereotypes’. This entails that individuals link their ethnic background to their capability to excel in certain sports. He notes that this process can be especially powerful in the case of ethnic minority groups, as these self-stereotypes can function as a form of pride in a context where minority groups tend be compared unfavourably to the majority group. If we reason in the opposite direction, however, this will also mean that a lack of athletic success and ethnic role models could highly diminish a sports appeal and direct interests to other sports or outside of the sports domain altogether. These notions lead to the following and final expectation: E5: Participation of ethnic minorities from countries where football on the amateur and/or elite level is relatively underdeveloped will be lower than that of other ethnic groups. 2.3 Methodology Data For the purpose of this study, the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) provided data of all club memberships from playing seasons 2005/2006 to 2014/2015. In addition to individual club memberships, these data contained individual members’ gender, date of birth and address. These individual characteristics were used to match these data with microdata from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), which contains the country of origin of Dutch citizens and their parents4. Around 94 percent of the roughly 2.2 million individual members from the original data were successfully matched with micro data from CBS. Figures on the countries of origin of the total Dutch population have been retrieved from StatLine (Statistics Netherlands). This is an openly accessible online platform maintained by CBS, through which Dutch country-level statistics based on the same data are published. 4 All presented results are based on calculations by the author using non-public microdata from Statistics Netherlands. Under certain conditions, these microdata are accessible for statistical and scientific research. For further information: microdata@cbs.nl.
Chapter 2. Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs 27 Measures Ethnicity The Netherlands is characterized by what Van Sterkenburg, Knoppers and De Leeuw (2012) have described as a layered system of ethnic classification. The basis of this system is similar to other continental European countries, such as Germany or Belgium, wherein ethnic categorizations are not based on the concept of race, as is the case in the United States, but on a primary distinction between an ‘indigenous’ majority population (autochtonen) and a ‘foreign’ minority population (allochtonen) whose roots are believed to lie somewhere else. In this system the notion of background is very important. The vast majority of people who are classified as ‘allochtonen’ have Dutch citizenship. However, they are considered foreign because either they themselves or a past generation is originally from a different place. In the past the ‘allochtonen’ category has often been split into a West and non-Western category, which can then be broken down further into specific national backgrounds. In public discourse and day to day life however, the term usually refers to the non-Western variant, and more specifically four of the most sizable minority groups in the Netherlands: citizens with Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean backgrounds. The first two groups have moved to the Netherlands as part of labour immigration waves in the 1960s and 1970s. The latter two groups have moved to the Netherlands as part of decolonization. People with Indonesian backgrounds are another ex-colonial group, but they are seldom associated with the former four groups. Much more recently a new wave of labour immigrants have entered the Netherlands from Middle and Eastern Europe, most notably Poland. Many of them do not have Dutch citizenship because this not a requirement to live and work in the Netherlands. The majority of them is however registered in the municipality where they live and are thus included in the data. Following this layered system of classification, I distinguish between five single nationality minority backgrounds: Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, Antillean and Indonesian. Normally, the first four of these categories are used in Dutch studies which include ethnic background. People with an Indonesian background were added as a separate category because they form one of the Netherlands’ biggest ethnic minority groups, with a specific colonial history that is clearly identifiable within the Dutch context. Furthermore, I choose to forgo the Western and non-Western minority categories and replace them with a set of six more specified ethnic categories referring to socio-cultural regions of origin,
28 Ethnic sorting in football similar to, and inspired by Dronkers and Van der Velden (2013): 1) Northern/Western/Southern European and Anglo-Saxon, 2) Middle and Eastern European, 3) North African and Muslim Asian, 4) Sub-Saharan African, 5) NonMuslim Asian and Oceanian (excluding Australia and New Zealand) and 6) Middle and South American. A detailed list of all countries making up these six categories can be found in Appendix A. To determine an individual’s ethnic background, I follow the operationalization procedure which is customary for Statistics Netherlands and Dutch academic researchers. This means that if somebody has two parents who are both born in the Netherlands, this person is considered ethnically Dutch5. If someone has at least one parent who is born outside of the Netherlands, this person is believed to have an ethnic minority background. If the individual is born outside of the Netherlands, the ethnic background is determined by the official country of birth (e.g. a person who is born in Turkey and has one or more parent who is born outside of the Netherlands will be considered to have a Turkish background). If an individual is born in the Netherlands, the country of birth of the parents is used to determine his or her ethnic background. In these cases, the country of birth of the mother is used over that of the father, unless the Netherlands is also her country of birth (e.g. a person who is born in the Netherlands with a mother born in Turkey and a father born in Morocco will be considered to have a Turkish background). Club Membership An individual is considered a member of an amateur football club when he or she is registered as a member at a club during the playing season. A playing season was measured as beginning on 15 August of a certain year and ending on 15 May of the following year. People who were registered as a member at a club after 15 May but terminated their membership prior to 15 August were left out. 5 Consequently, only first and second-generation minorities are included. Third generation minorities are categorized as ethnically Dutch in population statistics. While it could be argued that classifying this group as Dutch is problematic, explorations on the third-generation population indicates that this group is still very small and young for most backgrounds. Additionally, focusing on the first and second generations ensures the existence of a migration experience within the family while also preventing that individuals remain ‘strangers’ (Thiel & Seiberth, 2017) forever.
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