Beyond the pitch: A study of Dutch Caribbean diasporic belonging through baseball and softball narratives in the Netherlands

This article examines how the baseball/softball field serves as a site for negotiating belonging among the Dutch Caribbean diaspora in the Netherlands. Drawing on a postcolonial framework and cultural studies, it showcases how Dutch Caribbean club members negotiate questions of identity, home, and belonging within the continental Dutch baseball and softball communities. Using a narrative analysis of 12 interviews and participant observations throughout July and September of 2024, across three different clubs in the Netherlands, the study shows that the baseball field is neither a space of standardized integration nor utopic diasporic homemaking, but rather a postcolonial contact zone where practices of belonging are negotiated through remembrance and quiet acts of support, even as structural inequalities endure. This study contributes to the scholarship of sport, diaspora, and belonging by centering the lived experiences of Dutch Caribbean sporting communities within a broader postcolonial Dutch context.