Sport as a Means of Governing Social Integration: Discourses on Bridging and Bonding Social Relations

Abstract

This article analyzes how representatives of two sports-based interventions in Sweden conceptualize the ways in which different forms of social relations facilitate social inclusion and integration. The articulated statements are analyzed from a discursive and governmentality perspective. The analysis spotlights how sports practices ideally provide inclusive and bridging meetings between schools and children from different areas, and how bonding relations with formative role-models make it possible to reach out to young people in the community and to facilitate learning, guidance and social change according to certain norms. However, bonding relations between children from the same area are not spotlighted in discourse. This, and other discursive effects, are problematized with respect to how such discourse restrains and limits the conditions for the social inclusion and integration of the targeted youth.