Football, Migration, and Coalmining in Northern France, 1920s–1980s

Bibliographic Data

ID9968993
AuthorsMarion Fontaine (0000-0001-7795-4281, Université d'Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume60
IssueS23
Pages253-273
Publication date2015-10-05
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Review of Social History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-8590 • E-ISSN: 1469-512X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020859015000395
OpenAlexW2557467329
LanguageEN
References cited21

Football is often thought to have helped erase differences between natives and migrants in mining communities and to have helped in building a homogeneous class identity. Others have described this idea as a myth. Under closer scrutiny, however, relations between migrants and football are more complex than commonly thought. This article will elaborate on these complex relations by analysing the case of the coalfield in the French region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais during the twentieth century. Migrant workers were employed there from an early date: first, from the 1920s, Poles; later on other migrants, especially of Moroccan and Algerian descent. Migrants played an important role in the development of football in this region. This article looks at the influence of football on relations between migrants and other miners. More generally, it aims to show how sport was incorporated into the industrial mining world, both in employers’ policies and in the mining community

Aesthetics · Economics · Economy · Football · Geography · Homogeneous · Identity (music · Mythology · Political science · Scrutiny · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law

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