John Sugden

The World at their Feet: Professional Football and International Labor Migration

The global migration of footballers to and within the top professional leagues in Europe has greatly accelerated in the last decade. Commercial interests in this “football business” have also grown prodigiously and the English leagues, especially the Premier League, have experienced an associated and pronounced increase in foreign player migration. The Premier League, supported by intensive commercial investment, has placed England on the career map of some top global stars. The globalization of football and its labor migrants can only be considered as part of a multifaceted and multidirectional process. This paper provides a model for understanding the globalization of football and the movement of its labor, but also probes beneath this model, drawing on findings from interview-based interpretative research conducted with foreign professional players in England (n = 22). A typology based on player experiences is established, explaining some of the key experiential dimensions of sports labor migration.

Teaching and Playing Sport for Conflict Resolution and Co-Existence in Israel:

Football for Peace (F4P) is a sport-based co-existence project, for Jewish and Arab children, organized by the University of Brighton in partnership with the British Council, which has been running in towns and villages of the Galilee region of northern Israel since 2001. This article examines this initiative, first, by placing it in its broader socio-economic and political context; and, second, by tracing its specific history and development. Third, the article draws upon interviews conducted in the field and records kept by student volunteers to identify some of the key issues that emerge when making sport-based social interventions in complex, divided societies like Israel. The article suggests that if projects such of this are locally grounded, carefully thought out, and professionally managed they can make a modest contribution to wider efforts to promote conflict resolution and peaceful co-existence. The conclusion raises some of the broader socio-political issues and controversies that continue to inform the Project’s development.

Critical left-realism and sport interventions in divided societies

What, if any, is the value of sport to processes of peace and reconciliation? After introducing the largely rhetorical arguments for and against the value of using sport as a vehicle to promote peace building in divided societies, this article makes a more detailed and forensic examination of the evidence based on: the role played by sport in South Africa before and after apartheid; and second, drawing upon the author’s own experiences garnered over more than two decades of conducting research and leading sport-based intervention initiatives in Northern Ireland and Israel. The article argues that sport is intrinsically value neutral and under carefully managed circumstances it can make a positive if modest contribution to peace building. The mobilization of an engaged sociological imagination in the context of a broader human rights agenda is central to this contribution. Drawing upon notions of pragmatism, left realism and praxis, the article concludes by presenting a ‘ripple effect’ model that illustrates the circumstances under which sport can make a difference in the promotion of social justice and human rights in deeply divided societies.

Anyone for Football for Peace? The challenges of using sport in the service of co-existence in Israel

Football for Peace (F4P) is a joint University of Brighton and British Council initiative that aims to use values‐based football coaching to build bridges between neighbouring Jewish and Arab towns and villages in Israel, and in doing so make a modest contribution to the Peace Process in this most troubled of regions. The work of F4P seeks to make pragmatic and incremental grass‐roots interventions into the sport culture of Israel, helping to build bridges between otherwise divided communities and at the same time make a contribution to political/policy debates around sport in the region. Specifically its fourfold aims are to: provide opportunities for social contact across community boundaries; promote mutual understanding; engender in participants a desire for, and commitment to, peaceful coexistence; and enhance soccer skills and technical knowledge. The following essay overviews the history and development of the project before focussing on the 2005 initiative and the aborted 2006 project.

Sport for Development and Peace in Divided Societies: Cooperating for Inter-Community Empowerment in Israel

Abstract The idea of using sport for social, cultural and community development has been promoted for decades; however, only limited empirical research can be found that analyses the strategic potential of sport projects in contributing to conflict resolution, reconciliation and peace building in deeply divided societies. This study concentrates upon the experiences of a number of Football for Peace (F4P) projects operating in Israel in 2009. It identifies and investigates the inter-community sport management strategies employed in a particular project that featured Jewish, Arab, and Circassian communities in Northern Israel. The article focuses on and assesses the role played by external change agents in facilitating project delivery and development. Following an interpretive mode of enquiry, observations and focus group discussions with key project facilitators and sport coaches were conducted exploring participant experiences and using this information to develop practical recommendations for social development through sport. The following six strategic dimensions were elicited as critical elements for promoting positive inter-community relations, building local capacity and enhancing overall social development: greater emphasis on training for all volunteers; the provision of role model support; the development of local commitment and leadership; improvement of sport programming; the facilitation of wider community involvement; and project augmentation and extension. We argue that these practical suggestions have transferable implications for other grassroots organisations and NGOs that use sport projects in divided and/or disadvantaged communities elsewhere in the world.

Belfast United: Encouraging Cross-Community Relations through Sport in Northern Ireland:

Northern Ireland is a society which has a long history of community division. It is often claimed that sport has the capacity to serve as a medium for reconciliation between rival factions. Evidence suggests to the contrary that, in its native cultural setting, sport can reflect and even exaggerate existing divisions and this tends to be the case in Northern Ireland. Belfast United is a sport based community relations programme which carefully and deliberately manipulates the conditions under which sport is played in an attempt to promote better understanding between selected groups of young Protestants and Catholics living in Belfast. The highlight of the programme involves a residential experience and playing tour in the United States. Detailed evaluations reveal that, in the short term, exercises such as this can have a significant impression on the attitudes of the participants towards those affiliated with different religious traditions. The long term impact of Belfast United is almost impossible to gauge. The paper concludes by offering a series of principles which, after further research, may be adapted as a basis for good practice in the area of sport and community relations.

POWER AND RESISTANCE IN THE GOVERNANCE OF WORLD FOOTBALL Theorizing FIFA's Transnational Impact

FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) has been the governing body of world football since 1904. It has grown from a small European-based organization into a body with a membership of almost 200 nations. In this article, we trace this growth and locate the place of FIFA within a world order of transnational organizations and worldwide cultural politics. Drawing on previously unpublished material, face-to-face observation of the politics of FIFA and related football confederations, and unique insights into the structures and personalities who run the world game, the article demonstrates the importance of transnational organizations in sport for the expression of the national aspirations of developing countries, the goals of multinational companies, and the naked power of ambitious individuals. In doing so, the article shows sport to be a revealing focus for understanding the dynamics of power and resistance at the supranational level.

Sport for development and peace as contested terrain: place, community, ownership

Under the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) umbrella, an increasing number of sport projects are staged all over the world to improve the social, cultural, educational or psychological circumstances of marginalized and/or fractured communities. In research on such initiatives, only limited empirical examinations exist that focus specifically on garnering the perspectives of key players from local communities regarding value and impact of SDP. In addressing this issue, our study investigates the local lessons learnt from 13 Football for Peace (F4P) partnership projects that featured a mixture of Jewish, Arab, Bedouin and Circassian communities in Israel. Following an interpretive mode of enquiry, 30 interviews and two focus groups with key stakeholders were conducted, with an emphasis on exploring local experiences. Our findings highlight the diversity of community perspectives in relation to the following themes: values and delivery; engagement and commitment; and scope, regularity and sustainability. Specifically, our analysis illuminates the diverse interpretations and responses that exist in relation to the ethos, meanings and achievements of F4P, and calls for an appreciation of the intricacies, complexities and nuances in the way that the programme (and SDP work more generally) is received. Finally, the article demonstrates how the multiple theorizations and interpretations of community found within academic literature are reproduced and literally played out – but also contested, challenged, rejected and reformulated – in the practice of SDP.

Stories from Planet Football and Sportsworld: source relations and collusion in sport journalism

The profile of sport journalism has increased as the scale and media profile of large-scale international sporting events have escalated. This article considers the ways in which sport journalists have responded to such changes. It concentrates upon the nature of sport journalists’ relationships with their sources; their relationship with gatekeepers; and the issue of collusion, between journalists themselves and journalists and their subjects and sources. Drawing upon extensive periods of participation and observation at the Olympic Games, the FIFA (mens) football World Cup, and international football club and national championships and tournaments, and citing in-depth interviews with a senior wires-based journalist, the authors examine the practices of the sport journalism profession. These are also discussed in the light of journalists’ own published accounts, memoirs and reflections, and the wider, limited literature of research into the professional culture of sport journalism. In conclusion, the article argues that traditional legacies of source relations combine with current trends in promotional culture to confirm the collusive dynamic, and in widespread cases to intensify the trivialisation of the subject matter of the sport journalist.

Watched by the Games: Surveillance and security at the Olympics

Every four years the Summer Olympic Games fires the imagination of the largest and most diverse sport spectatorship and entices them in their hundreds of thousands to some of the First World’s most iconic and crowded cities. In addition, the ideological symbolism associated with the Olympic Games is rooted in Western, liberal democratic values and traditions. For those who do not share these ideals the Olympics represent something to stand against and, in extremity, disrupt and violate. In short, in a post-9/11 world, the Olympics provide a mouth-watering target for terrorists. Using themes of surveillance drawn form from Bentham and Foucault, this article analyses the nature of the terrorist threat and scale of the security operation designed to ensure the safety of the London 2012 Olympic Games. It concludes by considering the consequences of these measures on the city of London, particularly in terms of the civil liberties of its citizenry.