Football Fandom and Migration

This book studies how transnationalisation, Europeanisation and migration processes intersect with football fandom, through an analysis of the transnational narratives and practices of Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray football fans in Vienna, Austria. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Austria, Turkey and Germany, the author analyses the ways in which narratives about football fandom are often linked to migrant experiences, including practices of (self‑)culturalization in the diasporic context in Austria. The book shows how constructed ethnicities and also masculinities and femininities meet in football fan performances and in the construction of what makes a “proper” football fan. Turkish football fandom is a field where powerful prejudices and stereotypes amalgamate and interact. This study enables the reader to look into migration processes and discussions about related topics from a different angle: the love of a football club.

Football Fandom and Migration will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, European studies, political sciences, gender studies, leisure studies, sport sociology and history.

“The book is an important contribution to our ethnographic knowledge of the social dimensions of non-local football fandom and the role of fan practices in diaspora communities. … This book is engaging reading for any student or scholar with an interest in football fandom, migration and transnationalism.” (idrottsforum.org, February, 2019) “An insightful analysis of the transnationalisation of Turkish diaspora fandom in Austria. Szogs impressively shows how the socialisation of fans of the two big clubs from Istanbul goes hand in hand with complex reproductions and transformations of nationalism. From an actor-centred perspective it becomes utterly clear that football is not just football – and globalisation is not just globalisation.” (Tanıl Bora, Political Scientist, Turkey)

“With her remarkable book Football Fandom and Migration Nina Szogs vividly underlines that ethnography – the key method of anthropological research – is a significant tool to understand modern societies. In an excellent ethnographic analysis, Szogs disentangles the intersections of ethnicisation, masculinities and femininities and offers vital new perspectives on migration processes in Europe. The book can be considered a key contribution to latest migration research.” (Ina Merkel, Professor at the Department of European Ethnology/Cultural Studies at University of Marburg, Germany)

“This book highlights sport's - and especially football's - remarkable potential to assess intercultural relations. Nina Szogs offers a very fine-grained anthropological and sociological analysis of the manner in which Turkish diaspora supporters in Vienna act and react with regard to the hazards and vicissitudes of football. The game offers them a possibility to satisfy their needs for places of community reunion, but also to express their plural identities between their attachment to their beloved Turkish clubs and their adaptation to the Viennese cultural environment.” (Professor Yvan Gastaut, from the University Sophia-Antipolis in Nice)

Nina Szogs is a researcher at University of Vienna, Austria and Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany and is part of the interdisciplinary European project FREE: Football Research in an Enlarged Europe (FP7). Her research focuses on intersectionality, gender and migration. She is co-editor of New Ethnographies of Football in Europe (Palgrave, 2016).