Young refugees’ experiences of accumulating horizontal and vertical social capital through organised and informal sports

For the last 20 years, Putnam's conceptualisations of bonding and bridging social capital have become a common reference for policies and programmes that seek to promote integration in and through sports. However, few researchers have looked beyond face-to-face interactions to how sports may develop migrants’ relations to formal associations, institutions, and agencies in civil society. In this article, we aim to explore how young refugees accumulate diverse forms of social capital through participation in sports clubs and informal sports. Drawing on Lewandowski's conceptualisations of horizontal and vertical social capital, we analyse 10 young refugees’ experiences with sports participation in Norway. The results show that informants found it challenging to participate in sports clubs due to conflicting views on how to ‘do sports’ as well as processes of ‘othering’. As a result, their opportunities for accumulating vertical social capital (social connections and resources across vertical power differentials) were limited and only identified for the most highly skilled informants. Consequently, the informants dropped out of sports clubs and instead joined informal sports to experience a sense of community and belonging with peers similar to themselves. By doing so, the informants were able to accumulate horizontal social capital (resources within a specific socioeconomic or cultural stratum) as well as negotiating specific types of vertical social capital. Overall, our findings illustrate some of the challenges and limitations of Norwegian sports policy and clubs in facilitating social capital and, thus, social mobility for young refugees.