Integration of migrants is currently among the most relevant political issues in Western societies. In this context, voluntary sport clubs (VSCs) have been granted substantial trust to bring people together in joint sport activities. However, despite ambitious programmes launched by public authorities and/, or sport federations, a relatively small proportion of VSCs engage with such targeted initiatives. The existing literature provides explanations as to why VSCs do not implement external initiatives, but it falls notably short in explaining why they do. Therefore, the aim of our contribution is to understand why some VSCs implement programmes that promote social integration of people with a migration background. In a multi-case study design across five European countries, we developed, based on document analysis and interviews with key decision-makers case study reports of 30 VSCs engaged in programmes for the target group. From these cases, we identified a range of VSCs′ organisational identities (Stenling and Fahlén, 2016) that demonstrate clubs’ varying willingness along different horizons of justification to implement integrative measures. A typology constructed based on these organisational identities advances the understanding of clubs’ ambitions to further integrative goals and can be used by public authorities and sport federations to stimulate and support club-level processes.
Nagel et al. (Fri,) studied this question.