The Europeanization of Sports Associations Welcoming Migrants: International Recommendations, Local Contexts and Transnational Practices in Germany, France and England

This article examines the impact of European recommendations, local contexts and transnational exchanges on sports programs for welcoming migrants. The “sport model” promoted by European institutions, which is not very restrictive, contrasts with the reality of highly differing national and local policies and contexts. Despite this, we discovered numerous transnational relationships among members of these sport programs in three European countries (England, France, and Germany). Analyzed from the concept of social figurations developed by Norbert Elias and allowing the interdependence of relationships, we show that these interactions help legitimize and disseminate “good ways of doing things” across borders. This horizontal sharing of norms and beliefs reveals finally the diffusion, from the bottom up, of an “informal Europeanization” of welcoming migrants through sport. In addition, migrants express an alternative, transnational and informal culture in sport, which also calls for the establishment of intercultural relations with the local population, which are often limited.