Children and the ‘Social Cohesion’ Agenda in Sport: Children’s Participation in ‘Ethnically Mixed’ Sports Teams in the North of England

This study is set in the North of England in the context of debates around the integration of communities, after a series of street disturbances in the early 2000s. The debates centred upon ‘social cohesion’ and the social mixing of Pakistani British and White British communities. The current study explores this from the context of 10- to 11-year-old Asian, Black and White British boys participating in cricket and football clubs. It draws on the sociology of childhood approach that sees children as active participants and co-creators of their own lives. This more nuanced approach sheds important light on children’s own negotiations of home, peers, sports clubs and identities that are key to how cohesion is achieved.