On Monday 29th May 2017, I will speaking at the 45th Annual Convention of the North American Society for Sport History. My paper will focus on FC St. Pauli's commitment to supporting refugees in Hamburg. You can read the abstract for the paper below:
Refugees United
German
football and the refugee crisis: A case study of FC St. Pauli’s direct support
for refugees and asylum seekers in Hamburg, 2013 – 2017
In 2015, the world faced its largest refugee crisis since
World War II, with millions of families – from many countries including: Syria,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Sudan – forced to leave their homes due
to conflict and persecution. The ‘refugee crisis’ that unfolded saw 964,574
asylum claims registered in Germany in 2015 alone. At the height of the crisis,
in the summer of 2015, around 1,000 refugees were arriving every day at Hamburg
Hauptbahnhof (Central Station). The numbers alone are, at best,
incomprehensible and, at worst, dehumanizing – reducing people to mere
statistics and making them easy targets for discrimination and vilification by
the media and politicians alike.
FC St. Pauli, a professional football club playing in
Bundesliga 2, reached out to Hamburg’s refugee community. Based in working
class district of St. Pauli, close to Hamburg’s docks and only a few hundred
yards from the famous Reeperbahn red light district, FC St. Pauli has developed
a cult status among football fans. Since the mid-1980s, the club and its
fan-base have mixed professional sport with progressive politics; working
together to campaign against racism, sexism and homophobia in football.
Through a case study of FC St. Pauli, this paper will
examine German football’s overwhelmingly positive response to the refugee
crisis. ‘Refugees Welcome’ banners are a common sight inside German football
stadia, with many fan groups actively raising funds and awareness for refugee
projects. FC St. Pauli and its socially active fan-base have been at the
vanguard of support for refugees since 2013, when the arrival of a group of
around 300 refugees – fleeing the civil unrest in Libya – drew support on an
unprecedented scale for refugees.
On Friday 25 October 2013, at the end of a 0:0 draw between
FC St. Pauli and SV Sandhausen 10,000 fans poured out of St. Pauli’s Millerntor
stadium and joined a demonstration protesting against the Hamburg Senate’s
decision to deport the city’s ‘Lampedusa Refugees’ (named after the small
Mediterranean island off the coast of Libya where the refugees were detained by
the Italian Government before their eventual arrival in Hamburg). Following the
demonstration, a group of women who had played and coached with FC St. Pauli’s
women’s teams, took the decision to set up a football team for refugees, called
FC Lampedusa. With no official documentation, refugees were unable to play in
established amateur teams in the city. FC Lampedusa gave them the opportunity
to play competitive, organized football. When the crisis intensified in 2015,
FC Lampedusa was able to offer the sanctuary of football for a new generation
of refugees arriving in Hamburg. On 30 July 2016, FC Lampedusa were formally
adopted by FC St. Pauli – providing both logistical support for the day-to-day
running of the refugee football team and underling FC St. Pauli’s commitment to
social change. FC St. Pauli’s support for refugees is not limited to Germany,
inspired by the club’s position, supporters groups in Yorkshire, Glasgow and
Barcelona continue – through the medium of football – to work with local
refugee communities.
This paper seeks to clarify and critique football’s
prominent role in the cultural acceptance of refugees in German (and by wider
implication European) society. Set against a historical overview of fan
politics in German football, it will also explain why football fans are at the
forefront of progressive social change.
