Chapter 5. Off to greener pitches? 115 In table 5.3, I have presented the mean change in ingroup share and outgroup fractionalization between the old and new clubs of members who did not move between the 15th of August 2003 and the 15th of May 201420. By leaving out movers, 48,791 transfers between clubs were eliminated, lowering the total to 109,078 transfers. When we compare the figures for all transfers to those for the non-movers, no substantial differences can be observed21. The figures remain small and mixed. As a result, all expectations formulated in this chapter about the relationship between transfers between clubs and members’ ingroup share and outgroup fractionalization remain refuted. 5.5 Conclusions and discussion In this final empirical chapter, I zoomed in on member transfers between clubs. Given that transfers consist of both tie-dissolution and tie-formation, their study provides an interesting opportunity to explore the extent to which the traffic of members between clubs plays a role in ethnic sorting in amateur football. To this end, I formulated the following research question: To what extent are transfers of members between clubs related to differences between clubs’ ethnic compositions? Based on McPherson's theory of an ecology of affiliation and the previous chapter’s outcomes, I expected that transfers of individual members between clubs would contribute to niche formation by heightening these members’ ingroup share and/or lowering their outgroup fractionalization. The results presented in this chapter failed to confirm these expectations. Overall, members’ 20 This timeframe begins two years prior to the first playing season to take into account that movers may change clubs in the period after they have already moved. 21 Two other selections of non-movers were made. The first selection consisted of members who did not move between August 15th 2005 and May 15th 2014 and transferred to another club between August 15th 2005 and May 15th 2014. The second selection consisted of members who did not move between August 15th 2008 and May 15th 2014 and transferred to another club between August 15th 2010 and May 15th 2014. The use of these shorter timeframes did not have any meaningful impact on the results.
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