Introduction

In 2016 and 2017, more than 465 000 refugees attempted to reach European borders by crossing the Mediterranean Sea (United Nations Refugee Agency, 2019). In response to such events, over the years European governments have taken severe measures to address immigration. This includes encouraging civil society organizations, such as community sport organizations, to contribute to solve the refugee crisis. Voluntary sport organizations and community sport clubs are increasingly expected to work towards implementing political objectives (e.g. Robertson et al., Reference Robertson, Eime and Westerbeek2019; Spaaij et al., Reference Spaaij, Magee, Farquharson, Gorman, Jeanes, Lusher and Storr2018).

In the Nordic context, integration has traditionally been viewed as a public responsibility (Sveen et al., Reference Sveen, Anthun, Batt-Rawden and Tingvold2022). However in recent years, governments have increasingly commissioned voluntary stakeholders, such as national sport confederations, to direct their activities towards underrepresented and underprivileged groups based on the assumption that sport activity can ameliorate integration and health (e.g. Aggestål & Fahlén, Reference Aggestål and Fahlén2015). Several studies (e.g. Skille, Reference Skille2010, Reference Skille2011; Stenling & Fahlén, Reference Stenling and Fahlén2009) have aimed to explore how sport clubs respond to implementing public health policies, and a common theme running through this literature is that of institutional conflicts between contrasting logics framing the structures and actions of clubs. For example, Stenling and Fahlén (Reference Stenling and Fahlén2009) showed how sport clubs in Sweden find themselves in a struggle between logics of mass sport participation (known as sport-for-all), competitive elite sport, and commercial sport. The stated aims of the clubs were often in accordance with the sport-for-all logic, but there were few organizational measures directed towards accomplishing this. However, what they did find were sports committees, talent programmes, and marketing and sponsorship groups informed by logics of competition or commercialism. Similarly, Skille (Reference Skille2010, Reference Skille2011) maintains that competitiveness is the overriding convention in Scandinavian club sport and that sport-for-all ambitions are hard to realize because competitiveness requires the opposite: elitism, selection and exclusion. Such conventions may in turn lead to increased professionalization (e.g. Gammelsæter et al., Reference Gammelsæter, Herskedal and Egilsson2023; Nagel et al., Reference Nagel, Schlesinger, Bayle and Giauque2015; Seippel, Reference Seippel2019).

Based on a study of Norwegian voluntary sport clubs (VSC) and some local stakeholders (schools, refugee reception centres, city authorities) they cooperate with, this paper explores whether VSCs are a convenient measure for including refugees in society. The clubs in the study were either voluntary football clubs or the football section of multi-sport clubs. The paper is informed by the following two research questions: what expectations of refugee inclusion initiatives do local public stakeholders hold towards VSCs and, how do the clubs grapple with pursuing non-sport and sport objectives and systems simultaneously? Based on a unique data set, comprising both sport clubs and public refugee services, the paper adds to a growing critical research body questioning the role of VSCs as executors of public inclusion policies (e.g. Dowling, Reference Dowling2020; Nesse & Hovden, Reference Nesse and Hovden2023; Spaaij et al., Reference Spaaij, Magee, Farquharson, Gorman, Jeanes, Lusher and Storr2018). Conceptually, it contributes to our understanding of how appealing and compatible logics at the ideational (and political) level may run into mismatching practices. The paper is structured as follows. First, we provide an understanding of the context of Norwegian sport and refugee policies before we review the literature regarding inclusion of refugees in voluntary sport organizations. We then embark on the theoretical framework of institutional logics that guides the analysis of the data. Third, we outline the methods utilized before moving on to the results and discussion sections. Lastly, we conclude with suggestions for future research.

Context and Terms

Norwegian sport is organized under the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF). NIF has the sole responsibility for organized sport in Norway, and in 2019, at the time of the study, NIF consisted of 55 national sports federations and 17 district confederations, altogether consisting of almost 8 000 sports clubs and about 1,9 million memberships (Norges idrettsforbund, 2019). Norway had 5,3 million inhabitants.

The Football Association of Norway (NFF) is the biggest sport federation in Norway. NFF is organized in 18 districts. In 2019 it comprised more than 370 000 members representing approximately 1700 clubs that varied greatly in terms of location, size, number of hired staff and financial state (Norges Fotballforbund, 2019). Although it can be argued that Scandinavian football is an amalgam of voluntarism and commercialism (Andersson & Carlsson, Reference Andersson and Carlsson2009), all clubs affiliated with NFF are voluntary entities, meaning that they are democratic associations formed by people with a mutual interest in football (Gammelsæter & Jakobsen, Reference Gammelsæter and Jakobsen2008). Besides engaging in the sport activities, a substantial amount of energy is spent on building and maintaining club facilities, often the property of the club. The recruitment and organization of volunteer members as well as securing economic funding and access to facilities are crucial (Seippel, Reference Seippel2019). The clubs must conform to the goals and values of NIF and NFF, the main vision of NFF being “the joy of football, possibilities and challenges for all” (Norges Fotballforbund, 2016).

Whereas the clubs are open for all, refugees and asylum seekers are, for language, cultural, economic, and legal reasons, often not in a position to engage with the clubs (Mohammadi, Reference Mohammadi2019; Nesse & Hovden, Reference Nesse and Hovden2023; Spaaij, Reference Spaaij2013). This means that the clubs must reach out to these groups in specific ways and develop an understanding of their status and rights, and of the support system and roles of public and voluntary sector stakeholders.Footnote ¹

The status of asylum seeker is given to persons that has applied for protection in Norway while waiting for the application to be finally decided. Meanwhile, the person lives in a reception centre under the auspices of the Norwegian Directorate for Immigration (UDI). An asylum seeker whose application receives a positive answer gets a residence permit as refugee. The person will then move from the reception centre to a municipality that has agreed to settle her/him for the next five years. The newly settled refugee now has certain rights and obligations, for example a mandatory two-year introductory programme (three years in special occasions). Whilst participating in the introductory programme, economic support is provided by a variety of municipal and state bodies. Sport clubs that respond to invitations to working on inclusion and integration are required to navigate this system of public policies, politics, and priorities and to collaborate with the other stakeholders involved.

Literature Review

A growing body of publications have investigated the use of sport for the inclusion of refugees and forced migrants (Spaaij et al., Reference Spaaij, Broerse, Oxford, Luguetti, McLachlan, McDonald, Klepac, Lymbery, Bishara and Pankowiak2019). Perhaps as a reflection of the 2015–2017 migration crisis, and parallel to political and policy concerns, published research on the use of sport for the inclusion of refugees and forced migrants has surged, whereas the literature on refugees tended to focus on health and social and judicial matters (Amara et al., Reference Amara, Aquilina, Argent, Betzer-Tayar, Coalter, Green and Taylor2005), the main themes in the current literature are integration, social inclusion, and barriers and facilitators to participation (Spaaij et al., Reference Spaaij, Broerse, Oxford, Luguetti, McLachlan, McDonald, Klepac, Lymbery, Bishara and Pankowiak2019).

Several studies have investigated how sport clubs are engaged to facilitate community inclusion among refugees. Many of these address sport clubs set up with the specific aim of targeting refugees (Baker-Lewton et al., Reference Baker-Lewton, Sonn, Vincent and Curnow2017; Doidge et al., Reference Doidge, Keech and Sandri2020; Dukic et al., Reference Dukic, McDonald and Spaaij2017; McDonald et al., Reference McDonald, Spaaij and Dukic2019; Michelini et al., Reference Michelini, Burrmann, Nobis, Tuchel and Schlesinger2018; Robertson et al., Reference Robertson, Eime and Westerbeek2019; Stone, Reference Stone2018), while others study how ordinary VSCs respond to initiatives to integrate sport for refugees into their portfolio, alongside their regular activities (e.g. Burrmann et al., Reference Burrmann, Brandmann, Mutz and Zender2017; Dowling, Reference Dowling2020; Michelini et al., Reference Michelini, Burrmann, Nobis, Tuchel and Schlesinger2018; Stura, Reference Stura2019). Thus, one of the grand questions in this research is whether VSCs are convenient means to achieve refugee integration or if integration requires specific proactive club initiatives or special clubs set up for the purpose. VSCs have long attracted policy makers and sport associations and clubs have responded positively to authorities’ initiatives to set up integration programs, thus taking on the role of implementing political objectives (Stenling & Fahlén, Reference Stenling and Fahlén2016). The question is if this works, and if not, if it may work.

Based on a Delphi-study among Australian sport management academics and national sport organization managers, Robertson et al. (Reference Robertson, Eime and Westerbeek2019) concluded that as “most community sports organizations are primarily volunteer-based, they cannot be expected to extend beyond their core responsibilities and deliver on a range of other social issues outside the scope and resource capacity of the organization”. (p. 229). Van Haaften (Reference van Haaften2019), studying integration/segregation across diverse ethnic groups, concluded that voluntary football clubs, despite its broad outreach, have difficulties linking people with different ethnic backgrounds. Stura (Reference Stura2019), when studying inclusion of refugees into 15 Bavarian football clubs, found that a minority of clubs approached the refugees on their own, despite acknowledging their obligation to contribute to integration. When refugees happened to get inside the clubs, a decisive precondition for becoming part of the football team was meeting the team’s level of performance. Michelini et al. (Reference Michelini, Burrmann, Nobis, Tuchel and Schlesinger2018) set out to explore whether “organizational conditions of VSCs promote or hinder the implementation of sport activities for refugees?” (p. 23). Facing the migration crisis in 2015, the clubs in their study proved to quickly develop special offers, collaborating with reception centres, refugee camps, the Red Cross, municipalities and so on. The decision and implementation of the special offers were personalized. Individuals or small groups of influential club members took charge, however with board approval, acting in accordance with the club ethos of inclusion and integration. While Michelini et al. (Reference Michelini, Burrmann, Nobis, Tuchel and Schlesinger2018) say nothing about the persistence of the club offers they studied, Spaaij et al. (Reference Spaaij, Magee, Farquharson, Gorman, Jeanes, Lusher and Storr2018) found that in migrant clubs that demonstrated support for diversity work, the work was often haphazard and accidental. The clubs often failed to “systematically embed diversity into the fabric of the organization” (p. 293) because the initiatives relied on specific individuals, hardly surviving the service of these individuals. Nesse and Hovden (Reference Nesse and Hovden2023), interviewing top managers and board directors in 10 Norwegian football clubs found that integration effort was seen as extra work that required different and additional resources such as competence and organizational infrastructure: “most clubs translated their integration mandate as an additional mission for a football club. The responsibility to promote the integration of migrants was perceived as an external task put on them by the civil society.” (p. 362).

The Competing Logics Perspective

The reviewed body of literature highlights that while voluntary sport clubs are ascribed prominent social roles by the public and public authorities (e.g. Waardenburg & Nagel, Reference Waardenburg and Nagel2019), the empirical research pinpoints that fulfilling this role, at least regarding migration and refugee integration, does not happen automatically. On the contrary, special initiatives seem necessary and these tend to threaten or conflict with the core activities of the clubs. The voluntary clubs’ concern for their image, that is the expectations directed towards them from the outside, clashes with their cultures, “the tacit organizational understandings (e.g. assumptions, beliefs and values)” (Hatch & Schultz, Reference Hatch and Schultz2002, p. 996). In organizational institutionalism “the tacit organizational understandings” may be referred to as the institutional logic, which in Thornton and Ocasio’s (Reference Thornton and Ocasio2008) is “the socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality” (Thornton & Ocasio, Reference Thornton and Ocasio2008, p. 101). These patterns underpin social entities, such as VSCs which descriptively are independent organizations, formed on the basis of members’ sport interests, goals, ideas and engagement, and kept going by the members themselves while undertaking the necessary services, as they define them, to meet their goals, under the auspices of a democratically elected board (Thiel & Mayer, Reference Thiel and Mayer2009). However, the competing logics perspective holds that organizations, despite being rooted in its original raison d’être and historical patterns (Stinchcombe, Reference Stinchcombe1965), frequently face multiple logics that compete in guiding the action of key members in the organization (Lounsbury, Reference Lounsbury2007; Reay & Hinings, Reference Reay and Hinings2009). Hence, organizations, VSCs included, differ in their goals, identity and logic of procedures (e.g. Stenling & Fahlén, Reference Stenling and Fahlén2009) and frequently come to combine one or more institutional logics (e.g. Nowy et al., Reference Nowy, Feiler and Breuer2020).

The idea of institutional logics (cf. Greenwood et al., Reference Greenwood, Raynard, Kodeih, Micelotta and Lounsbury2011; Lounsbury, Reference Lounsbury2007; Thornton et al., Reference Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury2012) emanates from a conception of society (Friedland & Alford, Reference Friedland, Alford, Powell and DiMaggio1991, p. 240) as composed of interdependent institutions, all of which entail a specific institutionalized logic of what is good, right, and rational (Friedland & Alford, Reference Friedland, Alford, Powell and DiMaggio1991, p. 240). Organizations are seen as embedded in this inter-institutional system, and as such exposed to sets of institutional logics, networks of actors, and flows of resources. For Friedland and Alford (Reference Friedland, Alford, Powell and DiMaggio1991) the “potentially contradictory interinstitutional system” of “the capitalist West” (p. 232) comprised the bureaucratic state, democracy, the market, the nuclear family, and the Christian religion. Thornton et al. (Reference Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury2012) added community to the system. Whilst surely community based, (Gammelsæter, Reference Gammelsæter2020) proposes sport can meaningfully be conceptualized as an institution too. Its pyramidal structure, membership model, tournaments, trophies, awards, the autonomy of its organizations, etc., have not been imposed on it from the outside, but is developed historically bottom-up from the community club level to the international federation. (Greenwood et al., Reference Greenwood, Raynard, Kodeih, Micelotta and Lounsbury2011, p. 317).

Simultaneously, sport’s institutional environment exerts conflicting pressures on how sport should shape their organizational structure, how they should act, and what to believe (in) (Thiel & Mayer, Reference Thiel and Mayer2009). These pressures emanate among others from commercial and state logics (Gammelsæter, Reference Gammelsæter2020). The refugee crisis poses an example of the latter: VSCs are expected to deliver services that ameliorate refugees’ integration into society. Arguably, integration services may differ from offering sport participation or sport competition at elite level or in the local community. Furthermore, it is an example of how sport is valued for its many assumed positive externalities, counting inclusion/integration among keywords such as health, education, economic and community developments. Such imagined benefits translate into institutional logics that prescribe sport to shape its organization and actions to political outcomes (Stenling & Fahlén, Reference Stenling and Fahlén2016). Since sport depends much on the public purse, ignoring political expectation about what sport clubs should achieve is difficult, even if these prescriptions challenge the institutional logic of the sport club. The conflict is exacerbated by the fact that conflicting prescriptions shape the availability, value, and use of organizational resources (Bertels & Lawrence, Reference Bertels and Lawrence2016). If providing sport for its members and running special offers for refugees possibly accommodate conflicting logics, epitomized in how revenues and personnel are achieved and used, it is relevant to ask how sport clubs incorporate non-sport aims into their daily activities. Do their members mobilize around public policy issues, such as bettering cultural integration, within the club context, notwithstanding the club’s roots and performance logic?

Research Methods

The data presented in this paper were collected from the “Inclusion of Refugees in Norwegian Football Clubs” research project, running between 2017 and 2019. The aim of the project was to investigate how Norwegian football clubs dealt with the increased demand of working with inclusion of refugees. The project sought information concerning the impact of football club-driven sport activities for refugees in host communities; the strengths and weaknesses in the relation between relevant stakeholders; the institutional determinants for success; and the ‘best practices’, methodologies, and/or instruments that could be replicated.

Data Collection

The researchers selected three NFF district confederations in which to collect data. Districts were selected in cooperation with NFF, who provided contact details of district representatives. All case districts had experienced an increase in refugees and were thus familiar with issues relating to inclusion of this group.

The study draws on data from 41 semi-structured in-depth interviews. As outlined in Table 1, interviews were conducted with representatives from the sport sector (clubs, NFF districts, the central administration of NFF and NIF districts), the public sector (municipalities and public refugee services, primary schools), and other civil society actors. Baseline data about the clubs participating in the study are found in Table 2. The informants in all three case regions were identified both through purposive and snowball sampling. A team of researchers travelled to the case districts to collect the data. Most of the interviews were with one informant, but in a few cases, there were two, typically when in a club or a municipality office two people were equally interested in taking part of the study. We are aware of the risk that one colleague might influence the other, skewing the replies in a positive way, but compared to the others we did not find these interviews peculiar. Twenty of the interviews were conducted by two researchers, one asking the questions, the other taking notes. Twenty-one interviews were conducted by one researcher alone. The reason for this was pragmatic, adapting the schedule to the availability of the interviewees. Upon ensuring consent from the informants, 33 of the interviews where recorded and thereafter transcribed. Again, for pragmatic reasons, eight interviews had to be conducted via telephone by one researcher. Data from these come in the form of research notes. The interviews lasted between 40 and 90 min.

Table 1

Overview of interviews and informants

Category	Number of interviews	Number of informants	Recorded and transcribed	Research notes
Football clubs (FC)	14	16	10	4
District football federations	3	6	3	-
NFF	1	1	–	1
District sport confederations	2	3	1	1
Municipalities and public services (Public)	14	14	13	1
Schools and civil society actors (School/other)	3	3	3	–
Refugee reception centres	3	3	3	–
Total	41	46	33	7

Table 2

Baseline information about the clubs in the study

FC	Type of club	Football players	Club profile	Hired staff?	Funding for inclusion of refugees
1	Football club	400–450	Sport for all	2 × 50% administrative	No
2	Multi-sport club	300	Sport for all	1 × 100% administrative for the entire club	Modest from municipality
3	Multi-sport club	200	Sport for all	No	No
4	Multi-sport club	700	Sport for all	No	Modest from municipality and foundations
5	Football club	600	Sport for all	1 × 100% and administrative, 2 × 100% + 1 × 50% sport	No
6	Football club	500	Sport for all	100% administrative	Yes
7	Football club	1100	Sport for all	5 × 100% administrative and sport	Funds from NFF and public services
8	Multi-sport club	100	Sport for all	No	Yes
9	Multi-sport club	400	Sport for all	No	Modest from district sport confederation
10	Multi-sport club	600	Sport for all	No	Yes, from municipality and public services
11	Football club	200	Sport for all	1 × 100% administrative	Yes, from public services
12	Multi-sport club	600	Sport for all	1 × 100% administrative, 1 × 30% sport	Modest from municipality
13	Multi-sport club	300	Sport for all	No	Modest from municipality
14	Multi-sport club	550	Sport for all	1 × 100% administrative	No

Three different interview guides were developed, adapted to the institution the informant represented, allowing for flexibility regarding the informant’s background, experience, and status (Denzin & Lincoln, Reference Denzin and Lincoln2011). The semi-structured interview questions were designed by the research group to elicit data regarding how, from the perspectives of the institution they represented, the informants dealt with inclusion and what they saw as challenges and opportunities. Five focus areas of the interview guides were identified, based on a review of previous research literature: systems and strategies for inclusion; cooperation between stakeholders; challenges related to inclusion of refugees; actions and activities initiated by the club; and what was seen to be good inclusion practices.

Findings

The aim of the paper was to 1) explore what expectations in terms of refugee inclusion local stakeholders directed towards voluntary football clubs, and 2) how clubs grapple with pursuing non-sport and sport objectives simultaneously.