Migrations, sports and communities. The role of sports in the articulation of Mexican migrant communities in the United States

Abstract

In thousands of locations around the world, millions of people are forced to emigrate for political or economic reasons, violence or natural disasters. Subsequently, these immigrants will seek the rearticulation of their communities in their places of arrival through various processes, with contingent results. In this article, I document and examine the role of sports practice as one of the reconfiguration processes of immigrant communities in their destination places. Although the eventual formation of these communities can be explained from the insertion of immigrants in labor niches, for which social networks are deployed and articulated to a large extent based on ties of different kinds, the role of socio-cultural elements such as sports practice become important factors that facilitate and consolidate this process of community regrouping in the face of the dispersion imposed by labor processes in the global North. Likewise, this sport practice constitutes a vehicle that facilitates the insertion of immigrants themselves in their new arrival sites. For this, I examine the case of the practice of soccer and basketball among Mexican immigrants in California, United States. I conclude by pointing out the importance of this type of elements as a factor to explain not only the congregation of immigrants, but also and above all the emergence of identification processes that make possible the emergence of real immigrant communities, and thus be able to recognize themselves beyond the imposed meaning of transnational labor force.