Sport as integration: The German Beispiel critically analyzed

Jens Ljunggren
Department of History, Stockholm University

Until 2000, German ancestry was required to obtain German citizenship. When this rule was abolished, new opportunities opened up for immigrants to obtain citizenship, which eventually became of great importance for German football. When the country hosted the 2006 Men’s World Cup, a ‘new’ German nationalism was celebrated, which, unlike the old one, would be open, inclusive and cosmopolitan. In 2010, almost half of the German men’s national football team consisted of players with a foreign background. During the migration crisis in 2015, Angela Merkel, as head of government, pursued a tolerant asylum policy, but gradually the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) became a new political force to be reckoned with in the country.

Against this historical backdrop, Kate Zambon, associate professor of communication studies at the University of New Hampshire, examines in her new book the discourse on integration that took shape primarily around German soccer. She attempts to ‘theorize the connection’ between, on the one hand, the media’s construction of national identity and, on the other hand, integration as a way of defining immigrants’ place in national society. Using Foucault’s concept of biopolitics as an interpretive framework, Zambon shows that in the integration discourse that took shape around German football, those with a foreign background who adapted and were productive were praised, while those who did not were portrayed as a threat, and that this created a clear distinction between worthy and unworthy immigrants. By highlighting how the integration discourse sustained ‘neoliberal myths’, paved the way for the AfD’s vengeful right wing and contributed to maintaining a white Christian German identity, the analysis is explicitly ‘critical’.

The Germans were encouraged to be good and cheerful hosts and would now be healed by freeing themselves from their guilt-ridden historical burden. Instead, they would be allowed to express their national pride.

After an introductory chapter on the significance of the concept of Heimat in post-war Germany, chapter two analyzes the campaign You Are Germany, which was launched by German media companies ahead of the 2006 World Cup to improve and update the sense of national identity in the country. With clear references to sport, and soccer in particular, the campaign emphasized openness toward the country’s ethnic and national minorities. With its slogans about making the nation ‘a good friend’, the campaign, according to Zambon, was intended to generate support for a neoliberal political and economic model of society.

Next, the media coverage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup is examined. With assurances from the media that it was only about soccer, the event created a ‘safe space’ for German patriotism. Germany was presented as a country that, by undergoing a cleansing ritual, was in the process of rediscovering itself. The Germans were encouraged to be good and cheerful hosts and would now be healed by freeing themselves from their guilt-ridden historical burden. Instead, they would be allowed to express their national pride. Although many players in the national team already had foreign backgrounds, it was not until 2010 that this became a prominent theme in the media. Instead, the media gave people with foreign backgrounds the role of confirming the new German nationalism in their daily activities as salespeople, taxi drivers, or in other ways. The 2006 FIFA World Cup was bursting with both explicit, festive, and everyday low-key, so-called banal nationalism and ‘immigrants’ were used to legitimize these sentiments.

The study then focuses on three different integration plans that were developed after 2006, all of which highlighted sport, especially soccer, as a positive force for integration in the country. The government launched a national integration plan. The umbrella organization Deutsche Olympische Sportbund and the German Football Association also launched their own integration plans with accompanying supplementary materials such as brochures and activities for young people. Although the national integration plan emphasized that integration required strenuous efforts from the whole of society, the state and civil society, as well as from the ‘immigrants’ themselves, Zambon argues that the burdens were distributed unevenly to the detriment of the ‘immigrants.’ The state and society were urged to educate and employ people with foreign backgrounds and to show tolerance and openness. People with foreign backgrounds were urged to make themselves employable and culturally acceptable according to the conditions of the majority society. The responsibility for change was placed primarily on the ‘immigrants.’ The program pointed to a clear German ‘we,’ and it was the rules and norms of this alleged ‘we’ that were to be applied without question. Racism in the majority society was only touched upon in passing.

The plans of the various sports organizations emphasized the importance of sport for integration due to its transformative power. With its universal language and ability to attract people from foreign backgrounds, sport would educate these people to become good citizens by changing their behavior and improving their human capital. However, structural conditions and social inequalities were completely omitted from this narrative. The immigrant population was presented either as a resource for or, a threat to, German society, which made integration appear to be a matter of destiny.

The chapter ‘Immigrant Patriotism’ tells the story of a family with Lebanese roots who, after the 2006 World Cup, hung a 22-meter-long German flag on their house in Neukölln, Berlin. The Basel family took the message of the 2006 World Cup to heart and demonstrated their belonging to the German nation by showing patriotism. However, it became clear that German nationalism was not entirely uncontroversial, for example when left-wing groups attacked the flag and took it down. In the ensuing media debate, the left-wing groups were dismissed as xenophobic and the Basel family defended. Obviously, the nationalist celebrations won over the nationalism criticism in this battle.

This is followed by an analysis of how the debate surrounding the controversial 2010 book Deutschland schafft sich ab by Social Democrat and former finance minister Thilo Sarrazin, in which he pointed out the problems of immigration in sharply defined biological terms, which many considered racist, was debated and ultimately led to the issue of integration being consolidated as a serious problem area.

Zambon’s book captures the paradox that soccer has often been hierarchical, patriarchal, and authoritarian, and not without elements of sexism, misogyny, homophobia, or racism, but at the same time has clearly and often indisputably emerged as an integrating force in society.

The Bambi Award started as a film award in 1948 but has changed over the years and new award categories have been added. From 2010, an award was presented for best integration. The winner this time was national team player Mesut Özil. At the time, he was seen as a role model for the good Muslim. The next year’s winner, rapper Bushido, instead came to be seen in the media debate as the bad Muslim. In 2012, the award was given to Rabbi Daniel Alter after he was attacked by men of presumed Arab background with anti-Semitic motives. From an initially hopeful perspective on integration, the award, and the commentary surrounding it, increasingly came to problematise immigration and the country’s Muslim population.

Zambon’s book captures the paradox that soccer has often been hierarchical, patriarchal, and authoritarian, and not without elements of sexism, misogyny, homophobia, or racism, but at the same time has clearly and often indisputably emerged as an integrating force in society. Zambon’s critical review is a welcome correction in this regard. She commendably places soccer in its contemporary context and clarifies historical lines of development. Her analysis of the discourse on integration in sport should find supporters in several countries. Unfortunately, the book lacks a coherent presentation of the state of current research, which makes it difficult for the uninitiated reader to assess its contribution to knowledge. However, it is clear that the book gives a comprehensible presentation of the discourse on integration in sport in Germany during the first quarter of the 21st century.

The author consistently argues based on the book’s theoretical premises, the analyses are interesting and clear, and the sub-studies are well chosen. All of this is, of course, a strength. Still, I can’t help wondering if the author isn’t taking her conclusions a little too far. For example, she claims that despite the superficial promises in the integration discourse to offer immigrants a path to belonging, its ‘primary function’ was to reinforce a ‘Christian national normativity.’ However, there is no clear account of what white Christian German normativity was and is, which makes it difficult for the reader to evaluate the results. The selection of source material is also meagre at times. The sub-study on the 2006 World Cup is based on only two newspapers, the West German flagship among critical, investigative social newspapers, Der Spiegel, and the daily newspaper Mittdeutsche Zeitung, based in former East Germany. The analysis of the reception of Sarrazin’s book is also based on only two newspapers, Bild and Der Spiegel. The basis for this sub-study also consists of reviews on Amazon, which is questionable from a source-critical perspective and should have been discussed in more detail.

It is certainly not uncommon for sport to be used for biopolitical purposes. One would like to know more about how the educational ambitions aimed at Germans in general differed from those aimed specifically at people with a foreign background, and whether the discourse on integration in sport in the 21st century represented something new and different in relation to previous or other contemporary discourses on integration. It is, of course, a good thing that a book raises new research questions.

Copyright © Jens Ljunggren 2025