146 Ethnic sorting in football ethnic reflection of the Dutch population and what factors best explain differences in participation between ethnic groups?’ Firstly, the results of this chapter demonstrate that the number of members with a migration background has steadily increased over time, mirroring a trend in the overall Dutch population. Overall, membership of citizens with migrant backgrounds remains to lag behind that of citizens with Dutch backgrounds. When members with migrant backgrounds are broken down into eleven distinct groups, this reveals strong differences in membership rates. In multiple instances, memberships rates for specific backgrounds surpass those of members with Dutch backgrounds, which is at odds with what we know of (sports) association membership in general. Furthermore, ethnic differences in membership rates do not seem to align well with traditional explanations for disparities such as a lack of resources or exclusion. This suggests that ethnic groups also differ in their preference to be involved in (certain) organized sports. Gravitating to ethnic peers Chapter 3 investigates how members of six different backgrounds spread over clubs. The research question that guides this chapter is: ‘To what extent and in what way are ethnic groups within the Netherlands unequally distributed over amateur football clubs?’ The results demonstrate that citizens tend to have membership ties to football clubs who have a higher-than-average share of members with the same ethnic background. This leads to substantial ethnic segregation between associations and ensures that an important part of interethnic contact takes place between clubs rather than within clubs. At the same time, however, it becomes apparent that in the long term, ethnic segregation between clubs has been decreasing and that associations are becoming increasingly diverse. An important explanation for this is the steady decline in the number of football associations. As a result, a growing member population must be divided among an ever-smaller number of clubs. Club heterogeneity leads to dropout Chapter 4 focuses on the relationship between club composition and member dropout. Its research question is: ‘Does the ethnic heterogeneity of amateur football clubs affect member dropout?’ The results show that in ethnically heterogeneous associations, members drop out significantly faster than in ethnically homogeneous associations. There are two explanations for this. The
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