Football and refugees: From intuitive assumptions to empirical evidence

The FIRE+ project is looking to gather data, identify trends, and analyse the challenges among the grassroots actors using football to work with refugees, in order to influence local, national and European policymakers - participate in the survey!

Grassroots football represents a very helpful tool for the social inclusion of refugees in their host society. In Europe, especially since 2015, the massive contribution made by clubs and volunteers has not gone unnoticed. Entire catalogues of best practices have been published, success stories have been shared, a whole narrative has emerged.

There is no time, however, to lean back with self-satisfaction. Many civil society actors are still facing exactly the same obstacles and barriers which they reported some years ago already. They need more and better support from policymakers on all levels – local, national, European.

To make their case stronger, they need to provide evidence-based arguments rather than mere assumptions. Most of the time, our promotion of football for social inclusion of refugees, asylum-seekers, or other migrant publics, is grounded on intuition and anecdotal experience about its positive impact. What is needed is a more robust kind of evidence, based on rigorous surveys, and rubber-stamped by social sciences research.

This is easier said than done. Collecting and processing such evidence for the social impact of sport requires time, the right tools, and methodological know-how.

With its ongoing Internet survey, the FIRE+ project – supported by ERASMUS+, coordinated by Sport & Citizenship, and which sportanddev joined as partner – wants to help grassroots football actors in establishing exactly this kind of evidence-based findings that they can use in their interaction with decision-makers in politics, business, or public administration.

Our survey can aggregate individual stories into a convincing transnational argument. If you have engaged with refugees through football, tell us your story. If you know someone who did, forward them the link or QR code. The survey is available in English, French, German, and Italian. It will remain open until 31 December. It is confidential and user-friendly – you can make a pause, save your responses, and come back later.