Sport, Welfare and Social Policy in the European Union

Nicola R. Porro, Stefano Martelli, Alberto Testa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351118040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

Sport is often seen as an indicator of the civic maturity of a community, an aspect of the rights of citizens to health, education and social integration. This book examines the relationships between participation in sport and physical activity, and welfare policies across Europe.

It argues that the success of campaigns for the promotion of sport depend on the existence of dedicated welfare policies promoted by the European states and explores variations in cultural models and structures of governance across Europe. Addressing the function of supranational institutions such as the EU as well as voluntary networks, the book illuminates key issues in European societies such as migration, financial austerity and Brexit as they relate to sport policy.

This is important reading for scholars and students in the fields of European sport and physical activity, sociology, political science and organisational analysis, as well as operators and managers of the sport systems involved in advanced training programmes.

1 Introduction

Sport and the citizens of a disenchanted Europe

Nicola R. Porro, Stefano Martelli and Alberto Testa

On 20 June 2019, the day after the voting in the European Parliamentary elections, all European political leaders expressed their support for a politically ambitious relaunch of the so-called European model. A project to pursue without further postponements and hesitations. Brexit and the populist election advance of the previous May had highlighted its limits, delays and contradictions.

In the same days – si parva licet componere magnis – our transnational group was completing its research on the sport of rights and citizenship in Europe that we present in this volume. It is not a simple temporal coincidence. The boundaries of citizens’ sport contain, in fact, a complex and demanding system of opportunities. Sport for all and for everyone is also called a qualitative leap induced by cultural, social and demographic change in Europe at the end of the second decade of the 2000s. The sport of the citizens constitutes in itself a challenge to be fully integrated into the political, social and institutional scenarios of the European system. A system requiring not only a simple maintenance of its original project but a courageous transformation. Work and economic growth, acceptance and reciprocity, private security and collective safeguards question not only the governance of national sports systems, which are still very different. They also cross crucial issues regarding equal opportunities, social policies and environmental sustainability. Briefly: one cannot be a citizen of sport without first being a citizen of a democratic community, founded on a shared regime of rights, duties and opportunities. However, we are convinced that sport represents a strategic sensor for measuring the breadth and depth of the crisis. It also provides a valuable vantage point to capture a cultural and relational quality that cannot be reduced to statistical sequences or, on the contrary, to mere ideological declamations. Our work describes a varied but not inconsistent picture. It does not seek an anachronistic composition of cultural, institutional and organisational models. Rather, it seeks to provide elements of knowledge and reflection, venturing in some contributions to a wider range of interpretations of the phenomenon and its recent developments. As never before since the end of the ‘short century’, political tensions, financial crises, social conflicts and even institutional disputes over the destiny of European construction have in fact occurred.

Some observers have wondered whether we can still reasonably describe a European model. Old conflicts and new reasons for division have generated lacerations within almost all national states, mainly in matters of equality and social opportunities. Privileged and less affluent, secured and vulnerable classes, as well as diverse age groups and cultural subsystems, have further segmented giving rise to new forms of conflict. Brexit and the May 2019 vote highlight significant aspects of the new European question. Political leaders who have become entrepreneurs of fear fuel widespread social resentment. It originates from the nightmare of social downgrading and results in mass selfishness. The wind of national particularities has begun to blow again and the feeling of belonging to the European Union on the part of the post-socialist countries has weakened. The brain drain to countries offering more job opportunities and professional success is a reliable indicator of the depletion of human capital to which one half of the continent is exposed. Despite the capacity shown by the Union in withstanding the impact of a devastating financial crisis, disenchantment seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Rather than relaunching the European construction by correcting its critical points, some governments seem worried about creating profitable positions and particular advantages through the crisis. National populism is the main political expression of this dynamic. Its return effect is represented by the growing difficulty in providing shared solutions to systemic governance problems. Problems that are real, worrying, not easy to solve and too long neglected by the community establishment.

During this period, large voluntary amateur organisations were developed to encourage the practice of sports, as in the exemplary case of the Scandinavian sports for all movements. Widespread mass organisations, often flanking the parties of the left, also took shape in France and Italy. This process interested both the countries that had known the fascist-inspired totalitarian regimes between the two wars – where regime sport had been an instrument of both nationalistic exaltation and mass political control – as well as the post-communist countries associated with the Union in the 2000s after the collapse of the socialist system. The diffusion of sporting practice was favoured by regulated market competition, welfare policies and democratic institutions. The so-called ‘social democratic compromise’ thus subtracted sport from the logics of propaganda, political control and social mobilisation imposed between the two world wars by totalitarianisms. An original model of activity was established (both competitive and non-competitive) that was perfectly consistent with the philosophy of social citizenship. Not a few decades have passed, however, and even the sport of citizenship appears today as an articulated and sometimes complicated system, often lagging behind the transformations of the wider globalised sports system. The contributions collected here, relating to some exemplary cases, show the profound differences which still exist in the national governance systems. They also highlight the co-existence of old problems and new critical factors, concerning both traditional social actors – the political forces, the central and peripheral administrations of the states, the networks of voluntary action – and new protagonists. Among these are the organisations for equal opportunities in the broadest sense of the term, the environmental movements and the organisations dealing with the disabled population, the elderly, the ‘new citizens’ of extra-European origin. In short, a system of delicate social, institutional and organisational balances revolves around sport. It cannot be dismantled and reassembled artificially by bureaucrats. As an organic part of the welfare system, moreover, since the 1990s it has undergone an aggressive campaign of de-legitimisation both by liberal thought and by populist movements.

It cannot, therefore, be surprising that the same Eurozone has created a unified area for the market and the circulation of money, but did not encroach on the powers of nation states in the welfare regime: the same that generated and fuelled the sport of citizens. Over two centuries ago, Europe first developed the idea of ​​shared responses, inspired by social solidarity, to cope with the risks of ageing, illness, unemployment, loss of self-sufficiency. It was a question of bringing together, in the incipient time of industrialisation, democratisation, nation-building and the formation of mass markets and rights societies. It is the same challenge that awaits the EU in the 21st century and that our research intends to interpret and question, dealing with that demand for well-being, quality of life, health promotion and cultural and value promotion that is associated here with the sport of citizens. We therefore need to focus on the specifics of sport in relation to the policies of the nation states, trying to reconstruct the challenges that await sport and the trajectories it is following.

The main stimulus to this collective reflection among scholars of different European nationalities is represented by the need to analyse the developments and the transformations of the European sports system 12 years after the publication of the White Paper on Sport, elaborated on in 2007 by the EU Commission. The paper, chronologically situated between the first expansion towards Eastern Europe (2004 and 2007) and the Lisbon Treaty (2007),¹ although presenting heuristic and scientific limitations, had, however, the merit of undertaking sport as an issue requiring new attention and, indeed, connected to the wider issue of social integration. It is therefore symptomatic of a significant phase of the Union in the presence of new challenges and opposing forces. On one hand, the need for a more gradual and patient harmonisation of sport regulations after the entry of the post-socialist countries to the Union; on the other hand, the urgency of more convincing forms of EU policy regulations. The issue of integration, its normative meaning and its politico-cultural management, thus reappears in the form of the long-neglected ‘sport issue’. Legislative and social policy legitimisation of sport appear, however, closely interactive and intertwined. Partially moving away from the conceptual deceit of monolithic European sport is necessary but not sufficient for effective action in the presence of restrictions and resistance for innovation still present and active.² These include organisational heritage and the existing forms of institutional legitimacy of sport in different national contexts. Even before the expansion towards Eastern Europe, there were different and, in some cases, antagonistic ideas of the institutionalisation of sport organisations. Twenty-five years later, it is still impossible to find a unique model of institutional regulation of sport systems. We cannot therefore either renounce the reasons for the resistance to integration, nor ignore interesting and little-known experiences of contamination between organisational models and normative principles. The review presents examples of both cases.

The research has temporally superimposed itself on the tormented events of Brexit. A political crisis that cannot be limited to the country directly concerned, although so important, and which presents significant meanings for sport at large. Great Britain was in fact the land of choice for the voluntary sports movement and has shaped the cultural paradigm of sport in late modernity. The break with the 27 countries of the European Union has symbolic implications that have not yet been fully investigated. In May 2019, moreover, the European Union parliamentary elections registered an advance of populist and nationalist forces that were particularly critical – when not openly opposed – to the processes of European integration. Their success did not have sufficient dimensions to induce a crisis in the integration process, already exposed to various challenges. However, it had the effect of cracking the construction of a European ‘we’, as mentioned by Gasparini in his contribution dedicated to the Europeanisation of sport which introduces the second section of this research. Sport is a construct of identity that reverberates in that ‘we’. It draws nourishment and legitimacy from a philosophy inspired by social inclusion, solidarity and communication between different cultures. Precisely these values represent the privileged targets of the nationalist and anti-Europe insurgencies that have burst onto the political agenda of almost all EU countries, albeit with different electoral outcomes.

The Europeanisation of sport, like that of other crucial experiences in public life, therefore witnesses a critical passage in this historical and political phase. Social scientists must strive to develop a more courageous and less conventional analysis than those entrusted with the mere comparison of the institutional mechanisms regulating the sports systems in different countries. Assuming this perspective, Scheerder’s considerations, inspired by the idea of the societalisation of sport, conclude our work in continuity with the reflections dedicated by Gasparini to its Europeanisation. Both are problematic concepts with results that are not obvious and are still largely unforeseeable. Only through the comparison of national cases and specific experiences of voluntary action through sport, however, can we try to compose a multi-coloured but meaningful panorama.

We cannot limit ourselves to updating the excellent pioneering analyses proposed, between the 1990s and 2000, by the Club of Cologne under the guidance of Klaus Heinemann.³ Produced in other temporal contexts and in an incipient phase of Europeanisation, that research gives us a representation of the European sports system that is unrecognisable at the end of the second decade of the 2000s, despite the fact that just 20 years have passed. Thanks to the advanced vision of those scholars, the sports issue was settled strength of the most important sociological issue. The sports phenomenon, however, has experienced in recent decades a radical metamorphosis, becoming more and more conditioned by marketing, individualisation and hyper-mediatisation logics. Scientific inquiry has therefore focused on the relationship between sports, entertainment and old and new media. This trend has of course been accompanied by a growing attention to the phenomena of financial globalisation and the functional specialisation of the infinite subsystems that orbit sports. The integration between its many varied systems and subsystems has thus often been reduced to questions of tax regime, media promotion or commercial incentives, inevitably favouring the territories of spectacular professional sport.

It is therefore necessary to return to the original civic inspiration of the sport of citizenship and strive to update the analysis of the European model without prejudice. This requires overcoming an abstract and romantic representation of sport for all, but at the same time requires a renewed intellectual tension and the experimentation of original analytical tools. Not by chance Scheerder, in the pages that conclude this work, proposes a straight-to-the-point and useful analysis on the main sociological representations of the phenomenon. A reading that is in perfect harmony with that of us as editors, convinced as we are that innovation in sport and Europeanisation of sport constitute two sides of the same coin. On the condition, however, that both researchers and political decision-makers, as well as sports managers, strive to intercept changing cultural questions and to devise an organisational experiment capable of interpreting them.

We have therefore allowed ourselves, as a working method, to move away from a recognition of some exemplary experiences. We have thus tried to isolate, in the first section of the volume, some cases of sports activities oriented towards social inclusion, socialisation and representation of migration processes as a resource for the host communities rather than as a problem capable of arousing social alarm. Stefano Martelli and Mahfoud Amara propose updated reflections of the phenomenon from an original analysis perspective. The first investigates the significant traits of the question as they reverberate in concrete public policies. The second examines the socio-cultural dimension focusing on the experience of migrant communities of Islamic faith. Nico Bortoletto and Alessandro Porrovecchio, on the other hand, observe through the lens of sport the transformations affecting the universe of the voluntary action movement in the European context. Maurizio Esposito investigates comparatively the experiences of sport in the context of a total institution, such as prison, highlighting its potential as a socialisation and integration strategy rather than as a mere rehabilitation tool.

The second section of our research is devoted to a number of national and supranational contexts. In his contribution, which opens the section, William Gasparini convincingly illustrates the direction of what we mean as Europeanisation of sport in the years of Brexit and the disenchantment fuelled by the offsetting of new populisms against the ‘European establishment’.

The researchers have illustrated the main national cases investigating the relationship between sports movement, social institutions and welfare policies in the demographic ‘big five’: Germany (Michel Koebel), France (William Gasparini), the United Kingdom (Ivan Waddington and Andy Smith), Italy (Nicola R. Porro) and Spain (Juan Antonio Simón Sanjurio). Other authors have analysed the Scandinavian area (Irene Masoni), particularly significant for a comparative reading of the relationship between widespread sports practice and welfare policies, and that of the post-socialist countries (Simona Kustec and Simon Ličen). We have necessarily had to sacrifice some important national contexts. None of them is automatically attributable to the models traditionally adopted and all show characteristics that would deserve an accurate treatment. The hope is to be able to devote to these national cases a specific and more adequate medium-range analysis that we cannot carry out here.⁴

Finally, Jeroen Scheerder suggests a broader reading of how the European sports system – if one can analyse it in a unitary dimension – succeeds (or fails) in intercepting new cultural questions and widespread needs emerging from social change at large.

The research involved 15 scholars from 7 different countries. Each of them used tools and categories of analysis reflecting differentiated schools of thought and various national traditions. However, the need for an update of classical theoretical models, to which a social phenomenon so widespread and culturally relevant as the sport of citizens, was widely shared. The reference to scholars such as Titmuss, Esping-Andersen and Ferrera, to mention only the authors of the most known and organic models of classification of welfare systems, remains valuable. However, it inevitably requires theories to be verified, as they were elaborated in the post-war decades: a period that experienced the gestation, the birth and the progressive consolidation of the Welfare State in Western Europe. Seventy years later, the very idea of ​​sport for all has to face new challenges and undergo a non-trivial and non-obvious verification of its own foundations. The work we are proposing will have reached its most ambitious goal if it will succeed in encouraging and mobilising ideas and energies among scholars, public policy operators and sports opinion leaders in our countries.

Notes

1 A more ambitious European constitution project was rejected in 2005 by popular referendums in France and the Netherlands.

2 B. García-García (2009), Sport governance after the White Paper: The demise of the European model? International Journal of Sport Policy, 1: 267–284.

3 K. Heinemann (editor), 1999, Sport Clubs in Various European Countries. Schorndorf und Stuttgart: Hofmann Verlag-Schattauer; K. Heinemann (editor), 2003, Sport and Welfare Policies: Six European Case Studies. Schorndorf und Stuttgart: Hofmann Verlag-Schattauer.

4 On the contrary, in her article Irene Masoni associates the Norwegian case, despite the fact that the country does not belong to the EU, to those of Denmark and Sweden. This differentiat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• 1. Introduction: sport and the citizens of a disenchanted Europe
• PART I: Sports policies, non-profit and social issues
• PART II: The sport of citizenship: an incipient Europeanisation?
• Conclusion: established models of European sport revisited from a socio-politological approach
• Index