A considerable
body of the academic literature on football has tended to focus on one
particular aspect, namely the phenomena of football violence. However, Football
also plays and important role in tackling social exclusion. Research by Bradbury 2010 and Collins
and Kay 2014 has for example shown that when faced with exclusion and limited
opportunities to participate in sports, members of minority communities often
respond by forming their own teams, which become spaces for players to express
their own identities in a safe environment.
Drawing on focus group
discussions undertaken with players from Diverse City FC[1],
an all-female football team based in Dublin, this paper reveals young Muslim women’s
experiences of racism in contemporary
Irish Society and demonstrates how football has provided an important avenue to
overcome such experiences, and crucially a platform from which they can challenge
negative stereotypes around gender and racialised religious identity.
[1] Diverse
City is the centrepiece of the ongoing Hijabs
and Hat-tricks project initiated and supported by Sports Against Racism
Ireland The ‘Hijabs
and Hat-tricks’ project has been funded and / or supported by Sony, FIFA and
Street Football World. As a
club, Diverse City is unique in that it is the first, and still only, football
team founded specifically to facilitate access to sport for young Muslim women
and girls in Ireland.