Der Identitätseffekt europäisierter Lebenswelten: Europäisch werden durch Fussball?

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Alexander Brand; Professor Dr. Arne Niemann
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Politikwissenschaft
• Förderung: Förderung von 2017 bis 2022
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 386268084

The project aims to explore the importance of everyday/lifeworldly activities, i.e. football fandom and spectatorship, for the formation of a European identity. Research on European identity has thus far paid rather little attention to such lifeworldly, sport-related and supposedly non-political activities. This is rather astonishing as more than three quarters of football supporters and even a solid majority of the general European public think that football unites Europeans as current research suggests. The project examines the extent to which a Europeanisation of football fans perceptions and identities has taken place in times of Europeanised player markets, competitions and football governance structures. In this, our definition of fandom includes all persons who articulate an interest in following a football team, be it occasionally or on a regular basis, passively watching or actively following a team (TV spectators, casual stadium goers, organised supporters, self-styled ultràs etc.).We seek to overcome methodological hurdles in identity-related research and make generalisable inferences by using a multi-method approach. The combination of comparative analysis (three sets of four paired comparisons) and triangulation of data obtained through discourse analysis, survey research and in-depth interviews is to allow us to answer the following main question: to what extent are identities of football fans across Europe Europeanised? We propose two main analytic dimensions in which the degree of Europeanisation is to be ascertained: frames of reference and communities of belonging. We hypothesise that frames of reference and communities of belonging are more likely to have become Europeanised in contexts of (A) football clubs that regularly participate in European club competitions; (B) leagues that are substantially Europeanised; (C) publics that are generally Europhile.Any such Europeanised patterns of identification which were nurtured in a lifeworldly context of activities are of both scientific and political relevance. Identity-formation in everyday (supposedly non-political) transboundary contexts is still under-researched, in particular as regards politically salient implications. In addition, as football fans/spectators are very numerous, and given that they are presumed to be informed by rather local and national traditions (i.e. constituting a hard case), discovering a substantial degree of Europeanised identities among them could point to a (potential) source of cohesion at times of various European crises.

• DFG-Verfahren: Sachbeihilfen