The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of factors that influence girls with a foreign background to be active in football and how football clubs work to increase and maintain girls with a foreign background in sports. The study has a qualitative approach where five girls with foreign background and four football clubs representatives have been interviewed. The results show specific interpersonal factors that appears to be important for the girls continue playing football. For example, the importance of support from family, friends and coaches. The results also show how the football clubs today work, what efforts are being implemented today and what needs and wishes they have for future work to make girls to want to stay and play football. The conclusion is that two central factors, emotional and relational, are important for the girls. Different forms of relationships create positive feelings. Being appreciated, seen and treated in a satisfactory way is more important than winning and how to perform on the pitch. The football clubs representatives agrees that the first meeting the clubs have together with a family with a foreign background is vital for whether they should be interested in what they have to offer or not. Finally, in our study we give suggestions on what clubs should be able to work more with, such as an information letter in several languages to new members, elaborated clothing policy and a suggestion for an educational effort.

This thesis is on the Turkish-speaking community, comprising Turkish-Cypriots, Turks from Turkey, and Kurds from Turkey, and ethnic community football in London, which has been conceptualised as a transnational social field. It is intended as a contribution in the debates on the growing importance of issues of diasporic communities, their identity politics, and cultural integration in a context of ‘super-diversity’. There are three major analytical themes. The first is transnational diaspora politics, which is redefined to comprise any relationship of power or interest by mobilising diasporic connections. I argue that the Turkish-speaking community uses ethnic football as a means for communal mobilisation around and representation of their ethnic identity in the public space of London, a city of unique political-economic and symbolic significance for the Cyprus Conflict which helped create the Turkish and Greek Cypriot football leagues in London. I show that the Turkish-speaking community has ever since used football to create and maintain a bridge between London and all the different locations of the community including Cyprus, Turkey, Germany, and beyond. The second major theme is collective identities and how they are (re)produced, represented, and manifested in the diaspora. I argue that the nature of the field of ethnic football as a familiar, open, and welcoming space conveniently positioned between the Turkish-speaking private sphere and the British/Londoner public space has been a major factor accounting for the effectiveness of various identity projects to be pursued within this field. Lastly, after presenting the historical link between modern competitive sports and masculinity, I claim that the one defining aspect of all the ethnic identities reproduced within the field is their masculine character. The last analytical theme is the cultural integration of immigrant communities. Without adopting a normative definition of cultural integration, I have considered the implications of involvement in ethnic community football in terms of belonging, social inclusion, marginalisation, and the psychological development and well-being of the individuals involved. The presented and analysed discussion rejects any automatic causal link between involvement in sports and integration or that involvement in mono-ethnic sporting organisations and segregation. Having reviewed a few exemplary organisations, which used football for integration purposes, and the nature of the ethnic community leagues, I have also argued in this thesis that the field of ethnic community football, again due to its specific nature, structure, and position between the private and public spaces, offers a great potential to be engaged by local and national governments in the service of integration policies.