148 Ethnic sorting in football position. Instead, it is found that membership ties to football clubs are significantly strengthened by ethnic similarity and, vice versa, weakened by ethnic dissimilarity between members. While this effect appears to be universal, the degree in membership ties link to ethnic peers varies significantly between ethnic backgrounds. This makes the impact of ethnic background on membership for an important part not an individual but a relational issue. Namely, it is not one’s ethnic background per se that determines ties to amateur football clubs, but rather the extent to which this ethnic background does or does not overlap with the backgrounds of other club members. Composition over culture Another key insight of this dissertation is that its findings invalidate cultural explanations for ethnic disparities in the frequency and especially longevity of membership ties to sport clubs. A popular claim in public discourse is that membership ties to voluntary associations are deeply embedded in ‘Dutch culture’, as opposed to the ‘cultures’ of people with migrant backgrounds. This cultural deficit approach tends to go hand in hand with ideas that Dutch citizens with migrant backgrounds need to be educated or emancipated in order to fully participate in and contribute to civil society. While over time this claim has already become less and less tenable due to the rise of second and third generation citizens with migrant backgrounds, this dissertation serves as an important piece of counterevidence for when it undoubtedly arises in both public and private discourse on minority participation and membership. Rising fleetingness of membership ties Finally, this dissertation shows that because membership dynamics in amateur football stimulate member ties between ethnic peers, heterogeneous club compositions lead to significantly more member turnover. This finding, first of all, implies that the degree in which sports clubs serve as foci for the production of durable interethnic ties is limited, putting the popularized belief that clubs are ethnic integrators into question. Furthermore, as our society continues to ethnically diversify in the future, we should realize that this trend, at least on the short term, is likely to go hand in hand with an increase in the fleetingness of membership ties. This can have important ramifications for civil society organizations because, as mutual support organizations, their continuity depends for an important part on the stability of these ties.
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