The relevance of migration status for voluntary tasks in sports clubs

Current research has identified practices of ethnic closure and discrimination regarding voluntary positions in sports clubs. This article explores whether people with migration background differ in terms of taking on voluntary tasks from people without migration background. The analyses build on data from the project ‘Social Inclusion and Volunteering in Sports Clubs in Europe’ (SIVSCE) that includes information about volunteering, as well as, individual characteristics of the members (n = 10,641) in voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) from ten European countries. When differentiating between first and second-generation migrants, the findings show that for all the examined voluntary tasks in VSCs, second-generation migrants are significantly better represented than first-generation migrants. Multiple regression analyses for different voluntary tasks indicate that direct effects of migration status disappear under the control of other socio-economic and membership-related variables. This indicates that the underrepresentation of first-generation migrants in the different task areas is not greatly influenced by ethnic closure and discrimination in the recruiting practices of the clubs, rather differences in volunteering are associated with variances of underlying individual characteristics such as educational level and membership duration.