More than a Game: Embodied Everyday Anti-Racism among Young Filipino-Australian Street Ballers

Abstract

This paper explores marginalisation experienced in mainstream basketball by young Filipino-Australian men from Sydney's western suburbs. Sharing findings from a larger ethnographic study undertaken with Filipino immigrants in Sydney on experiences of everyday racism and resistance, this paper uses a biographical account to examine intricate connections between lives and racialising social processes. In sporting contexts, the body and its comportment provide the sites for domination and resistance. The analysis applies Bourdieu's concept of habitus to examine how broad racial formations are embodied in mainstream basketball. Furthermore, this paper examines the ways in which the playing style of ‘street ball’ is used to engage with corporeality as a mode of everyday anti-racism.