Official Policies and Informal Transversal Networks: Creating ‘Pan-European Identifications’ through Sport?

Abstract

The idea that sport has been drawn into helping build a collective identity around the nation-state, particularly in the immediate ‘era of independence’ after 1945, is well documented. However, it is only recently that sport has been linked to notions of moulding what we term here as ‘pan-European identifications’. It is our argument that there are two distinctive forms to such identification. The first posits a tangible notion of identity based around territories such as nation-states. Sport assists in this process through ‘official’ policies, such as declarations, reports and statements by the European Commission and other pan-European institutions. The second form recognizes that increasing transversal interactions weakens ideas of territorialized identity, resulting in a looser ‘sense of belonging’. Sport helps craft identifications here in an informal manner through pan-European sporting competitions, such as the UEFA Champions League and 2004 European football championships. This article is structured to look at both forms of this sport/identification interface whilst also considering the complex nature of sport and identity by explaining how sport can simultaneously erode such identifications.