Minoritized group’s sport participation figure as a trope in debates on emancipation and integration. In policies in the Netherlands, and Europe more broadly, sport is promoted to migrant/Muslim/bi-cultural/ ‘ethnic’ others as a means to participation in society, and success stories are consequently celebrated. In sport research, the persistent focus on culture and religion presents 'migration background' and Islam as the counterparts of a modern, emancipated sporting life. This very representation creates the inequalities that policy makers claim they want to combat. Integral to the top-down discursive classification systems of ‘migrants’ across Europe is a common colour-blindness (Goldberg, 2008; M’charek et al., 2014) that has been part of European liberal political movements of equality and anti-discrimination. ‘Immigrant integration’ sustains a classed and raced form of dominance that is less precisely called ‘native’ or even ‘nativist’ than ‘white’ (Schinkel, 2028).

European governments are relentlessly slow in coming to terms with the effects of their colour-blind approach. Affinity- and identity-based groups in sports and leisure take matters in their own hands to fundamentally change the principles of ‘community’ and belonging in sports. Based on ethnographic research among Muslim kickboxers in the Netherlands (Rana, 2022) and Muslim runners in the Netherlands and California (US) (Rana, forthcoming), this paper analyses the rise of affinity-based sport groups in Europe. Muslim recreational athletes explicitly reflect on the process of being ‘othered’ and how it affects the (im)possibilities of joy and pleasure in their recreational sport practices. Affinity groups engage with a world that has shaped them as subjects through oppression and/or marginalization. I show how in navigating new environments and new movement together, a playfulness, pleasure, and joy are co-created that were experienced as unavailable before.

The research demonstrates how affinity groups confront the unspoken whiteness of existing sports associations and create a space free of racism for themselves; a space in which they can experience playfulness. The analysis of affinity groups in sports shows us how fostering ethno-racial and religious identities and affinity is crucial for sports to be a truly inclusive and a potential liberatory practice for all.

LITERATURE

Goldberg, D. (2008). The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism. Wiley.

M’charek, A., Schramm, K., & Skinner, D. (2014). Technologies of Belonging: The Absent Presence of Race

in Europe, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 39(4), 459–467.

Rana, J. (2022). Punching Back: Gender, Religion and Belonging in Women-Only Kickboxing. Berghahn Books.

Schinkel, W. (2018). Against ‘Immigrant Integration’: For an End to Neocolonial Knowledge Production, Comparative Migration Studies, 6(31).

During the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, a number of Global North advocates of women’s sport called for the exclusion of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif from the women’s competition. How did feminist actors engage in epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) in constructing Khelif as a “danger” to other women, and with what consequences for the normalization of misogyny in sport as well as the personal safety of Khelif?

This paper is drawn from a larger 4-year project on the role of feminist lobby groups in shaping policy decisions affecting transgender and intersex people. I present a discursive analysis of social media posts, letters, and commentaries during the two weeks of the Paris Olympic Games 2024, authored by cisgender women associated with five lobby groups located in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States.

I suggest that such women can be seen as wielding misogyny to defend their own privileged position within the matrix of domination that characterizes international sport (Collins, 1990; Hamilton, 2019). In the case of Khelif, this misogyny was channelled via the hashtag and trope of the “biological male”: an appeal to the objectivity of science and incontrovertibility of biology, while ignoring the complexity of sex and athletic performance (Karkazis, 2019). Importantly, such acts must be situated in a longer history of efforts to wield science to target women of colour, what Bailey (2016) refers to as “misogynoir” (see also Litchfield et al., 2018).

I argue that the online harassment and abuse of certain women deemed unworthy of protection constitutes a double standard that ultimately undermines the safety and security of all women in sporting spaces. Yet, as I have argued elsewhere (Pape, 2024), such dynamics cannot be explained without also considering how the masculine organization of sport undermines opportunities to build solidarity amongst diverse women.

LITERATURE

Bailey, M. (2016). Misogynoir in medical media: On Caster Semenya and R. Kelly. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 2(2), 1–31.

Collins, P. H. (1990). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge.

Hamilton, L. T., Armstrong, E. A., Seeley, J. L., & Armstrong, E. M. (2019). Hegemonic Femininities and Inter-

sectional Domination. Sociological Theory, 37(4), 315–341.

Karkazis, K. (2019). The misuses of “biological sex”. The Lancet, 394(10212), 1898–1899.

Litchfield, C., Kavanagh, Emma, Osborne, Jaquelyn, & and Jones, I. (2018). Social media and the politics of gender, race and identity: The case of Serena Williams. European Journal for Sport and Society, 15(2), 154–170.

Pape, M. (2024). Saving Women’s Sport: The Case for Feminist Dialogue with the Un-regulated Majority. Sociology of Sport Journal, 41(4), 370–379.

Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? Die Philosophin, 14(27), 42–58.

Since the beginning of modern sports, athletes’ unequal abilities − i.e., those that are not imputable to training or “talent” − have been a central preoccupation of sports decision-making authorities. The main dispositive implemented to manage the issue of athletes’ uneven performance is sport categories; most often based on the body's biological characteristics considered the most determinant of performance (sex, age, weight) (Parry & Martínková, 2021). However, some sports do not follow this approach. Indeed, the social world of parasport features innovative ways of classifying bodies that extend beyond such biomedical measurement. This is the case in powerchair hockey (PCH), a parasport developed by and for people living with degenerative neuromuscular diseases.

Drawing on a 5-year multi-sited ethnography of PCH in Switzerland (Paccaud, 2021), my communication analyzes the dispositive of body governmentality (Fassin & Memmi, 2004) that is sports categorization. It aims to elucidate how physical dis/ability variations are managed in a single-category team sport. It also offers insights into how this dispositive shapes athletes’ opportunities to participate in competition.

In PCH, women and men, children and adults, and people with various types and degrees of impairment play in a single category. A further specificity of this parasport is the progressive nature of athletes' physical impairments and dis/abilities. Thus, the challenge was to implement a dispositive that could govern both inter-individual (between players and teams at a given time) and intra-individual (for the same person over time) body diversity and variations in dis/abilities. PCH has developed innovative eligibility and classification regulations, which does not measure body's biological characteristics but rather assess the impact of impairments in the given sports setting. Despite some persistent ableist inequalities, the PCH classification system makes it possible to adapt one's way of playing and keep participating as physical impairments worsen and the volume of physical abilities decreases without being (too) devalued within the team. This way, most players continue playing competitively to the point of their death (Paccaud, im Druck).

LITERATURE

Fassin, D., & Memmi, D. (2004). Le gouvernement des corps. Paris : Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales.

Paccaud, L. (2021). Faire carrière dans le powerchair hockey: Formation et transformation des parcours de vie de personnes ayant des in/capacités physiques « sévères ». Dissertation, University de Lausanne.

Paccaud, L. (im Druck). «Lives worth living: Social organization of death of athletes with physical disabilities». Alter – European Journal for Disability Research.

Parry, J., & Martínková, I. (2021). The logic of categorization in sport. European Journal of Sport Science, 21(11), 148−1491.