The social selectivity of certain sports with regard to German migrants theoretical reflections using handball as an example

Borggrefe C, Cachay K. The social selectivity of certain sports with regard to German migrants theoretical reflections using handball as an example. EUROPEAN JOURNAL FOR SPORT AND SOCIETY. 2018;15(3):250-267.In Germany, sports like football, weightlifting and boxing, practised by many sportsmen and women with a migrant background, stand in stark contrast with sports rarely taken up by the migrant population. Among the latter is handball, undoubtedly the second most popular German team sport after football. This paper addresses the problem of social selectivity in handball with regard to migrants in Germany and aims at identifying possible causes of this lack of participation on the basis of theoretical reflections. In concrete terms, the objective is to develop a theoretical model in which all exclusion mechanisms contributing to the social barriers facing people with a migrant background in handball are collated