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E-book Sport, Forced Migration and the 'Refugee Crisis'

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Penilaian

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The tabloid newspaper Bild portrayed the rise of Bakery Jatta as a professional football player with almost fan-alike admiration. The word ‘fairy tale’ was widely used to describe the sport career of this young Gambian, who migrated to Europe in 2015 in the context of the ‘refugee crisis’ and rapidly made a name for himself in one of the world’s top football leagues. Within just a few years, that same newspaper initiated and pushed a media campaign depicting Jatta as an impostor. In 2016, over 30 young asylum seekers joined a small and traditional sports club in the suburb of a large German city. When these new members joined, the club experienced numerous changes, renewed it-self and mobilised additional resources. At their request, the club’s first cricket team was established in 2017 and joined the German cricket league. Despite its successes and the generous involvement of dozens of participants, the cricket team dealt with social conflicts between internal factions and part of the players were recruited by other cricket teams, resulting in the dropout of some team members. In Hamdallaye, a refugee site in the capital city of Niger, sport ac-tivities take place regularly despite discouraging conditions. In co-operation with the Fondazione Milan, the site’s management organises, offers, and promotes a variety of sport disciplines, predominantly football. In this particular setting, sport is understood as a therapy that can help refugees who were evacuated from Libya to Niger to recover from their traumatic experiences. Several Syrian elite water polo players migrated to Europe following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. After resettling in different countries and resuming their sport careers, they participated in various water polo events as one team. While they agree that sport helped them integrate in Europe, their biographical trajectories differ significantly. Only one of the several young talents who were once teammates still plays water polo at a professional level. These anecdotes exemplify some of the potential roles sport has played in the context of the ‘refugee crisis’. Using a sociological ap-proach, this book explores what lies behind the allegedly close re-lationship between the ‘refugee crisis’ and the sport system. This chapter sheds light on the approach taken to explain this social phenomenon, to further elaborate the leading research questions and to outline the main features of this book. Many migrants arrived in the European Union (EU) via the Mediterranean Sea or overland through Southeast Europe between 2013 and 2018. The majority were Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans es-caping countries riddled by ongoing armed conflict (UNHCR, 2021). Asylum applications in Europe increased considerably between 2015 and 2016 (Eurostat, 2020). The often politicised expression ‘refugee crisis’ (Sigona, 2018)1 was coined to describe this massive displacement of people from West Asia and North Africa to the EU, and evolved to become a total social fact (Mauss, 2002), with economic, legal, political, and religious implica-tions. Economically, the crisis required the development of expensive management programmes and challenged European governments’ fi-nancial resources (Kancs & Lecca, 2018). Juridically, asylum legislation became subject to a ‘recast exercise’ (Trauner, 2016). Politically, the inability to agree on a collective approach nearly caused the collapse of the EU, partly as a consequence of the rise of populist and anti- immigrant parties (Algan et al., 2017). Religiously, the crisis revived interreligious rivalries and aroused islamophobia (Schmiedel & Smith, 2018).

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

301 MIC s

Penerbit

New York : Taylor & Francis., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

143 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781003370673

Klasifikasi

301

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Sociology and Anthropology, Society

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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