Can ‘the ghetto’ really take over the county? ‘Race’,generation & social change in local football in the UK

Abstract

The involvement of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds in local sports clubs is little used as a route for examining questions of their wider identity politics and exploring the impact of generational change in local sport. This is often because of difficulties involved in conducting qualitative research at the same site over an extended period. In this paper we report on two bouts of intensive ethnographic and interview study spanning a period of almost 20 years at a single African-Caribbean heritage football club in the city of Leicester, in the English east Midlands. Our findings suggest that considerable tensions have emerged over time inside the Meadbrooke Cavaliers club – tensions which threaten the historic cultural meaning of the club as a site for community solidarity, black masculine ‘resistance’ and identity formation. The commodification of local football in England from the early 1990s, signs of black occupational and social mobility and new ‘race’ dynamics for young black men in the city have all combined to reconfigure the role and meaning of the Cavaliers club in the lives of the local black communities which formed and have constituted the club since its founding in 1970.

Keywords

ethnography generation local soccer pluralism racism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Andersson

(2009) Immigrant teams in Sweden and the case of Assyriska FF. Soccer and Society 10(3–4): 398–417.

Appadurai

(1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Back

Crabbe

Solomos

(2001) The Changing Face of Football: Racism, Identity and Multiculture in the English Game. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Beazley

(2006) Postwar Leicester. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.

Bebber

(2012) Violence and Racism in Football: Politics and Cultural Conflict in British Society, 1968–1998. London: Pickering & Chatto.

Benyon

Solomos

(1987) British urban unrest in the 1980s. In: Benyon

Solomos

(eds) The Roots of Urban Unrest. Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 1–10.

Bhabha

(1990) The third space: Interview with Homi Bhabba. In: Rutherford

(ed.) Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 207–221.

Bonney

Le Goff

(2007) Leicester’s cultural diversity in the context of the British debate about multiculturalism. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations 6(6): 45–58.

Bradbury

(2002) A Survey of Local Football Clubs Affiliated to the Leicestershire and Rutland County FA: Issues of Racism, Ethnicity and Player and Spectator Behaviour in Local Football. Leicester: SNCCFR, University of Leicester.

10.

Bradbury

(2011) From racial exclusions to new inclusions: Black and minority ethnic participation in football clubs in the East Midlands of England. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 46(1): 23–44.

11.

Bradbury

(2013) Institutional racism, whiteness and the under-representation of minorities in leadership positions in football in Europe. Soccer and Society 14(3): 296–314.

12.

Bradbury

Williams

(2006) New Labour, racism and “new” football in England. Patterns of Prejudice 40(1): 61–82.

13.

Bulmer

Solomos

(2004) Introduction. In: Bulmer

Solomos

(eds) Researching Race and Racism. London: Routledge, pp. 1–15.

14.

Burdsey

(2004) Obstacle race? ‘Race’, racism and the recruitment of British Asian professional footballers. Patterns of Prejudice 38(3): 279–299.

15.

Burdsey

(2006) No ball games allowed? A socio-historic examination of the development and social significance of British Asian football clubs. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32: 477–496.

16.

Campbell

(2013) Cavaliers made us “United”: Local football, identity, politics and second-generation African-Caribbean youth in the East Midlands 1970–9. Sport in History 33(2): 169–194.

17.

Campbell

Williams

(in press) ‘Race’, politics & local football: Continuity and change in the life of a British African-Caribbean local football club. Sport in Society.

18.

Cantle

(2001) Community cohesion: A report of the independent review team. Cantle Report, HMSO, UK, December 2001.

19.

Cantle

(2005) Community Cohesion. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

20.

Cantle

(2012) Interculturalism: The New Era of Cohesion and Diversity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

21.

Coffey

(1995) The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity. London: SAGE.

22.

Council of Europe (2009) On combating racism and racial discrimination in the field of sport. ECRI General Policy Recommendations no. 12, Brussels: COE, March 2009.

23.

Garland

Rowe

(2001) Racism and Antiracism in Football. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

24.

Gilroy

(1987) There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. London: Unwin Hyman.

25.

Giulianotti

(2005) Sport spectators and the social consequences of commodification. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 29(4): 386–410.

26.

Gunaratnam

(2003) Researching Race and Ethnicity: Methods, Knowledge and Power. London: SAGE.

27.

Gunter

(2008) Growing up bad: Black youth, “road” culture and badness in an East London neighbourhood. Crime, Media, Culture 4(3): 349–366.

28.

Halm

(2005) Turkish immigrants in German amateur football. In: Tomlinson

Young

(eds) German Football: History, Culture and Society. London: Routledge, pp. 73–92.

29.

Jones

(2002) The black experience within English semi-professional football. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 26(1): 47–65.

30.

Kassimeris

(ed.) (2009) Anti-racism in European Football: Fair Play For All. Plymouth UK: Lexington Books.

31.

King

(2004) Offside Racism: Playing the White Man. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

32.

Long

Hylton

Welch

. (2001) Part of the game? An examination of racism in grass roots football. A report prepared for Kick It Out, Centre of Leisure and Sport Research, Leeds Metropolitan University. Leeds: Leeds Metropolitan University.

33.

Long

Robinson

Spracklen

(2005) Promoting racial equality within sports organisations. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 29(1): 41–59.

34.

Lusted

(2009) Playing games with “race”: Understanding resistance to “race” equality initiatives in English local football governance. Soccer and Society 10(6): 722–739.

35.

Machin

Mayr

(2007) Antiracism in the British government’s model regional newspaper: The talking cure. Discourse & Society 18(4): 453–477.

36.

Marret

(1989) Immigrants Settling in the City. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

37.

Marret

(1993) Resettlement of Ugandan Asians in Leicester. Journal of Refugee Studies 6(3): 248–259.

38.

Millward

(2007) True cosmopolitanism or notional acceptance of non-national players in English football. Sport in Society 10(4): 601–622.

39.

Muller

van Zoonen

de Roode

(2007) Accidental racists: Experiences and contradictions of racism in local Amsterdam soccer fan culture. Soccer and Society 8(2–3): 335–350.

40.

Murji

Neal

(2011) Riot: Race and politics in the 2011 disorders. Sociological Research Online 16(4): 24. Available at: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/16/4/24.html

41.

Oldenburg

(1999) The Great Good Place. New York: De Capo Press.

42.

Parker

(2001) Soccer, servitude and sub-cultural identity: Football traineeship and masculine construction. Soccer and Society 2(1): 59–80.

43.

Rhodes

(1994) Race-of-interviewer effects: a brief comment. Sociology 28(2): 547–558.

44.

Rowe

Gilmour

(2009) Global sport: Where Wembley Way meets Bollywood Boulevard. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(2): 171–182.

45.

Singh

(2003) Multiculturalism in contemporary Britain: Reflections on the “Leicester model”. International Journal of Multicultural Societies 5(1): 40–54.

46.

Solomos

(1999) Social research and the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. Sociological Research Online 4(1). Available at: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/4/lawrence/solomos.html

47.

Thomas

(1996) Kicking racism out of football: A supporters’ view. Race & Class 36(4): 95–101.

48.

Vertovec

(1994) Multicultural, multi-Asian, multi-Muslim Leicester: Dimensions of social complexity, ethnic organization and local government interface. Innovation 7(2): 259–274.

49.

Vertovec

(2007) Super diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6): 1024–1054.

50.

Vidal-Hall

(2003) Leicester: City of migration. Index on Censorship 32(2): 132–141.

51.

Westwood

(1990) Racism, black masculinity and the politics of space. In: Hearn

Morgan

(eds) Men, Masculinities and Social Theory. London: Unwin Hyman, pp. 55–71.

52.

Westwood

(1991) Red star over Leicester: Racism, the politics of identity and black youth in Britain. In: Werbner

Anwar

(eds) Black and Ethnic Leadership in Britain. London: Routledge, pp. 146–169.

53.

Williams

(1993) Meadbrooke Cavaliers: An Oral History. Leicester: Living History Unit, Leicester City Council.

54.

Williams

(1994) Cavaliers is a black club: ‘race’, Identity and local football in England. In: Giulianotti

Williams

(eds) Game without Frontiers: Football, Identity and Modernity. Aldershot: Arena, pp. 153–184.

55.

Woodward

(2004) Rumbles in the jungle: Boxing, Racialization and the performance of masculinity. Leisure Studies 23(1): 5–17.