A collection that develops our knowledge and understanding of the role of football in diaspora communities

Hans K. Hognestad
University of South-Eastern Norway

Diaspora studies evolved as a substantial subfield in the late 20th century, predominantly as a key analytical focus within the emerging cultural studies from the 1960’s onwards.  With a focus on how identities are constructed in homes away from home, diaspora communities have since drawn scholarly attention within broader studies of migration, race and globalization more generally. Diaspora and transnational connections have appeared in various sports studies collections after 1990. However, apart from studies such as Ben Carrington’s Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora(2010) and Eduardo Archetti’s pioneering study Masculinities: Football, polo and the tango in Argentina (1999), diaspora has figured as a fairly marginal analytical field in football studies. For these reasons, Football and Diaspora is a welcome and, we could argue, an overdue collection with studies of diaspora communities in different corners of the world negotiating identities through football.

Sangmi Lee and Jeffrey Kassing, the editors, provide an introduction which briefly contextualizes studies of football as a case for studying diaspora communities and transnational migration. With references to contrasting scholarly views on the importance of nation states in more general diaspora studies, the editors point to a general consensus among researchers that ethnic ties to homelands tend to decrease over generations as diaspora communities tend to assimilate with the majority populations. Simultaneously they point to opposite tendencies as these groups are reminded about their cultural and racial ethnicity over several generations. This in turn often generate frictions between the majority and minority populations, pointing to key challenges related to tolerance, peace and coexistence in multicultural societies.  Their arguments for specifically using football in the study of such relations are convincing, as the game represents a locally grounded but global sport which may serve as platforms for diasporic communities to create identities but also to voice political conflicts rooted in their homeland.

They point to the paradox of Croatian clubs getting labeled nationalistic while clubs such as Melbourne Croatia, Sydney Croatia and Adelaide Croatia all have a history of containing mostly non-Croatian players.

The collection is divided into three main parts: “Community and representation”, “Transnational connections” and “Diasporic claims”, and covers studies of diasporic footballing communities from different corners of the world.  Mohammed Ademo opens the first part with an intriguing analysis of the Ethiopian diaspora in the United States in a chapter based on interviews with former leaders, coaches and players. The dominant Ethiopian immigrant group in the United States are members of the Oromo diaspora, with the Tigray segment forming another significant immigrant community with roots in Ethiopia. Ademo shows how conflicts and civil unrest, rooted in the revolutions in 1974 and 1991, have shaped the current Ethiopian immigrant population in the United States. Soccer plays an important role as a vehicle for organizing the diaspora communities, yet often in conflicting ways as the organized leagues are segregated along ethnic boundaries. The polarization is evident not only in soccer, but also at Ethiopian cultural festivals and political rallies, interestingly generating higher attendances, as is evident at football matches with intense rivalries all over the world. Three separate football federations all celebrate Ethiopian identity and togetherness, yet organize separate tournaments with strict rules for ethnic belonging in order to participate. Ademo shows how these paradoxes generate competing Ethiopian nationalisms among the diaspora communities in the United States, and as a consequence, generate social capital that reproduces networks of ethnic boundaries and conflict.

Ethnic club identities, rooted in diaspora communities, have a long and contested history in Australian football. Vesna Drapic and Ivan Hrstić outline a predominantly historical context for expressions and contestations of immigrant identities in Australian football in general. Their analysis is focused on how Croatian diaspora identities have been expressed in Australian football, especially since the significant flow of Croatian immigrants into Australia in the years just after World War 2, and what they regard as a systematic discrimination from the majority population and governing Australian sports bodies. Drapic and Hrstić argue that dominant politics of assimilation in the years after WW2 marginalized ethnic football clubs and ignored the importance and potential of networking and creating opportunities for new immigrants in Australia. They point to the paradox of Croatian clubs getting labeled nationalistic while clubs such as Melbourne Croatia, Sydney Croatia and Adelaide Croatia all have a history of containing mostly non-Croatian players. The authors therefore conclude, interestingly, that the ethnic clubs on the contrary became agents of the policies of multiculturalism, embraced by the larger Australian society.

Stephen Andon has looked at the influences of members of the Bolivian diaspora in the early days of Major League Soccer (MLS), notably of the club DC United, a franchise team established in 1996 in Washington.  In one sentence Andon possibly outlines the rationale for the whole collection by stating that “…soccer fandom is suited to diaspora communities because such fandoms enact a constitutive identity rooted in place and based upon actions, rituals, stories, patterns of behavior, and other forms of creative production common to diasporic communities.” (p. 72). Andon tells the story of how immigrant fans from Bolivia, and one in particular, Oscar Zambrana, started a supporter group for DC United called La Barra Bravas, reflecting a common name for the most active and devoted fans in stadiums across Latin America. After a fascinating account of how Zambrana succeeded in his aims of “educating Americans” about how to be passionate football fans, he analyses how the club’s decision to move from its original home, RFK (Robert F. Kennedy) stadium to a new stadium, in a wealthier part of southwest Washington, generated widespread feelings of a loss of home. The new Audi Field stadium, opened in 2017, signaled a shift towards a more corporate style according to the author. La Barra Bravas felt marginalized in the decision making process and quickly the loss of the old home led to a cultural alienation which eventually led to the demise of La Barra Bravas.

Marian Vaczi, John Bieter and Argia Beristain opens part 2 with a chapter on football fandom among Basque diaspora in the USA. This chapter is partly focused on perceptions and different definitions of Basque identities with a focus on the biggest football club in the Bascue region, the La Liga club Athletic Bilbao, and their policy of only fielding players with Basque origins or connections. This is provided as the background for the staging of a football match in Boise, Idaho, between Athletic Bilbao and the Mexican club Tijuana, as part of the International Basque Festival, organized in Boise every five years for Basque diaspora from not only USA, but also Latin-America, Canada and Australia.  The authors conclude that while the intentions behind the staging of this football match was to raise money for Basque studies at Boise State University, the strengthening of transnational ties between the Basque diaspora and people from the Basque region itself was of greater immediate cultural significance.

Christopher Cox has written a chapter on the fabulous and widely celebrated success of the “Atlas Lions”, Morocco’s national men’s team, during the FIFA World Cup in 2022, with a focus on the widespread support for the team in Moroccan diaspora communities in Europe. Based mostly on social media sources Cox examines the meanings of the current Morrocan national team, which consists mostly of players from Moroccan diaspora. The Moroccan diaspora is among the largest in the world in proportion to the population of the home country. Cox contextualizes the impact of the 2022 World Cup around the political conditions which caused the flux of emigrants out of Morocco from the early 1960’s. Cox points to a more general trend regarding successful football teams at major international tournaments when he points to the euphoria generated among the Moroccan diaspora following the strong performances of the Atlas Lions in Qatar 2022. With the majority of players residing and having grown up outside Morocco, Cox also shows how members of Moroccan diaspora could identify with the team in terms of having grown up in similar socioeconomic conditions in France, Belgium, Netherlands and other Western countries. Having largely experienced marginalization as Moroccan immigrants in Europe, Cox argues that the performances of the “diaspora” Moroccan national team, as they reached the semi finals of the 2022 World Cup, significantly increased a sense of pride and belonging among diaspora Moroccans in general. Towards the end of his chapter he highlights some of the challenges caused by a sense of priority given to players in the Moroccan diaspora over home-grown players. The domestic Moroccan league is known for its big clubs in Casablanca and Rabat, with high professional standards and a league attended by large crowds and a passionate support. Cox therefore argues that players from local clubs seem to get neglected by the Royal Moroccan Football Federation in selections to the national team.

Manase Kudzai Chiweshe’s chapter on the reimagining of national pride and patriotism is also based on social media studies as he has looked at online fan cultures around the Zimbabwean national men’s team. With a focus on social media interactions involving both Zimbabwean citizens abroad and in the homeland, Chiweshe describes his approach as a kind of “…cyber ethnography [that] includes participant observation on social media spaces, online interviews, and analysis of online reports and blogs.” (p. 137). Chiweshe points to his earlier studies in which he has showed how virtual fandom allows for greater interaction but less physical contact. He sees the virtual football fandom landscape as defined by placelessness, yet here interestingly points to a common geographical focus as the common denominator for the online interactions with likes, posts and comments around performances of the Zimbabwe national team. Chiweshe shows how the absence of a successful national football team, despite being nicknamed “The Warriors”, still enable Zimbabwean citizens to experience a sense of national duty, pride and patriotism across ethnic divides and origins in the homeland.

The last two chapters of this collection deals with diasporic claims with a focus on two quite different historical and geographical examples. Steve Menary and Sangmi Lee has written a chapter on the role of football in claims for diaspora identities by groups outside the official FIFA family, with a focus on how mostly indigenous populations have navigated and negotiated identities through football, predominantly through the CONIFA (Confederation of Independent Football Associations) network. The authors list a number of examples of clubs, leagues and tournaments globally with a contested political narrative. John Kelly rounds off the collection with a chapter on how Celtic Football Club through its history has become both a symbol and a lived space in which the Irish diaspora can perform and experience their Irishness in Scotland. He argues that such performances have systematically been marginalized by powers in the majority population.

While not all the chapters generate genuinely new insights, this collection covers a wide span of empirical studies with contributions that, combined, serve to develop our knowledge and understanding of the role of football in diaspora communities around the world. Significantly Football and Diaspora also enhances our understanding of contested narratives and contemporary cultural complexities in the game.

Copyright © Hans K. Hognestad 2025