(De)securitisation and human rights: the power games over fans’ safety and rights in European football

This paper argues that struggles over fan safety and rights, blanket bans and hosting conditions in European football provide a key site through which old and new questions about power, fragmentation and legitimacy are re-emerging in Europe today. By extending Beck’s meta-power game theory, the paper contributes towards an under­standing of how contestations over fans’ cross-border mobility, hosting conditions and democratic participation are subject to overlapping and competing claims of authority, and involve power games between states, football authorities, clubs, supporter networks and international organisations. By mapping two power game arenas – relating to (i) blanket bans and (ii) safety and service – this paper demonstrates how European football expresses the development of new power balances and relations that transcend traditional dichotomies of national/international and public/private and proceed without fixed templates in a global age. The article adds to evolving debates on fans’ rights and the (de)securitisation of football.