Anastassia Tsoukala

Boundary-creating Processes and the Social Construction of Threat:

Looking at the key theoretical approaches to the social construction of threat in the sociology of deviance and in political science, this article addresses the way boundaries between groups are created in different contexts. Comparison between UK media coverage of terrorists and football hooligans reveals that this is a rational process that draws boundaries on the basis of the position of the target group in the political field rather than the objective seriousness of the threat.

Timing ‘dangerousness’: football crowd disorder in the Italian and Greek press

This article seeks to shed light on the reasons beneath the emergence of football hooliganism-related media-orchestrated moral panics. Comparative analysis of the upmarket press coverage of the issue in Italy and Greece from the 1970s onwards reveals that the transforming of football hooliganism into a security threat was to a great extent dissociated from the scale and seriousness of the phenomenon. In both case studies, the change in the way journalists perceived football hooligans was closely associated with an array of social and political factors that were unrelated to football crowd violence. Contextualization of these findings suggests that the gradual replacement of the political origins of this threat-focused perception by apparently depoliticized risk-oriented security threat assessments has played an important role in legitimating liberty-restricting counter-hooliganism policies.

Legal Responses to Football ‘Hooliganism’ in Europe—Introduction

In this introduction, the authors explain the subject and the motivations behind this collection. They explain the methodology used, the rationale for the jurisdictions chosen and the value of this contribution to the existing literature on the subject of football crowd regulation and management. They consider the transnational responses to football-related disorder: for example, the European Convention in Spectator Violence and Misbehaviour at Sports Events, and in Particular Football Matches 1985, and the relevant legislative instruments as well as the role of the European Union in the regulation of football-related disorder. The authors explain how the legal regulation of football-related disorder relates to civil rights/liberties and human rights law. Finally, the authors explain the difficulties attached to the use of the term ‘football hooliganism’.

Conclusions: Social Control at the Expense of Civil Liberties and Human Rights

Despite significant differences in both fan culture and the problems of violence and disorder in connection with football, there has been a convergence of legal and policing tools designed to manage football crowds across Europe. Set in a wider neoliberal political context, where there is an increasing emphasis on prevention and security at the expense of more traditional modes of criminal justice, the management of football crowds across Europe has seen the introduction and development of pre-emptive policing powers, administrative ‘control orders’, and the gathering and sharing of personal information on suspected ‘hooligans’. This increasing social control of football crowds has been at the expense of both traditional state civil liberties and also human rights under the ECHR. These security-centric approaches to football crowd management are disproportionate to their human rights infringements given the actual extent and severity of the problem of football disorder and violence, and the existence of less restrictive—and more effective—alternatives.