‘British Asianness’ in Football

‘Britain’s South Asian community represents around five per cent of the total population, yet only two players from that community – Leicester’s Hamza Choudhury and Aston Villa’s Neil Taylor – are part of Premier League first-team squads‘ (Sky Sports 27/08/19)

In this final blog, I discuss an ethnography by Daniel Burdsey ‘British Asians and Football- Culture, Identity and Exclusion’ (2007). As stated in the quote of Sky Sports, British Asian football players are significantly under-represented in professional football regarding their share in the total population of the United Kingdom. Burdsey outlines multiple popular and academic explanations for this exclusion and concludes that football is ‘an extremely important social arena for the articulation and contestation of identity’ (Burdsey 2007: 95), which constructs processes, structures and attitudes of exclusion of British Asian football players in the Premier League.

British Asians in British Football
Burdsey’s ethnography is focused on male, British Asian football players at the elite level. Those footballers have South Asian (Bangladesh, India or Pakistan) roots and are in possession of the British citizenship (Burdsey 2007: 11). Important to understand in this terminology is the heterogeneity and diversity concerning the experiences, identities and lifestyles of the men. There is no such thing as ‘British Asianness’. Burdsey still uses this concept because it is often used in discussions regarding this topic by multiple actors (Burdsey 2007: 11). This note is important while reading the rest of this analysis. Let’s return to the case study itself. British Asian footballers are significantly under-represented in the first division of the football league, while they are over-represented in the lower and amateur divisions. Their absence at the elite division is a peculiar situation because football is ‘a popular leisure activity among many British Asian men, and it also plays a key role in post-migratory male lifestyles’ (Burdsey 2007: 37). In other words, ‘football is a popular and socially significant activity for British Asians’ (ibid).

It’s ‘cos they’re all shite mate!
So, why are British Asians excluded from the elite level? According to popular understandings, British Asians lack talent and their ‘Asiannes’ restrains the development of proper football skills. Burdsey gives an example of such popular understandings:

[Daniel Burdsey approaches counter to buy a copy of the weekly British Asian newspaper Eastern Eye]
Newsagent (inquisitively): Eastern Eye?
DB: Yes, it is for my research. I work down the road at the university.
Newsagent: what are you researching?
DB: The under-representation of British Asian professional footballers.
Newsagent (without irony): It’s ‘cos they’re all shite mate! [followed by laughter] (Burdsey 2007: 35)

In his ethnography, Burdsey illustrates that this popular understanding of the exclusion is no reflection of reality. He argues that racial stereotypes, racism, beliefs of British Asians as ‘outsiders’ and mentally and physically incapable of playing the game, shapes their exclusion at the elite level. In other words, dominant discourses and structures facilitate, create, shape and preserve inequalities and disadvantages concerning the position of British Asians at the British elite football level.

Popular understandings of the exclusion
Popular explanations for the exclusion of British Asians at the elite level are focused on notions of talent and notions of suitability. Burdsey outlines that we can understand those explanations in terms of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ (2007: 19). According to popular convictions, British Asians are not represented in the Premier League because their ‘Asian bodies’, their cultural habits and their religion are not suitable for Premier League football (ibid). Those notions are considered as ‘structural factors’ in these ideas. At the same time, notions of ‘agency’ obstruct participation in the highest league.

Popular structural and agency explanations
Allegedly, obstacles regarding participation at the elite level are due to physical, cultural and religious determinants. So, how could we understand this? Understandings and opinions about sports can be traced back to the colonial period (Besnier et al. 2018: 53). The British colonists arrived in South Asia and introduced football as leisure. However, they considered the bodies of the local inhabitants not as strong, masculine, tough and courageous as they considered themselves and the local inhabitants were therefore less capable of playing the game (Burdsey 2007: 21). The ideas of the different bodies therefore shape understandings and perspectives of the world. In other words, ‘the body is the medium through which messages about identity are transmitted’ (Burdsey 2007: 21). ‘Asians’ were simply speaking ‘just too weak’.

Those notions ‘undoubtedly continue to operate as an arena for the articulation of dominant racial ideologies which, due to sport’s inherent power relations, are also reproduced by minority groups’ (Burdsey 2007: 24). Apart from physical characteristics, the culture and religion of British Asians obstruct participation. Popular understandings point out the ‘eating schedule’ and ‘prayer moments in the day’ are deviant concerning the rest of the team and therefore hinder the optimal development of football skills. This popular understanding needs to be problematized because we cannot assume that ‘British Asians’ are a homogeneous group with communal and collective eating patterns and religious practices. However, this is an important aspect of this popular understanding of the exclusion. Burdsey (2007: 72) gives an example of this communal and collective understanding:

‘I had a mixed diet as well and not just Asian food because that’s another stereotype. [People] think that the diet is wrong […]’ (Interview, 11 February 2002)

Let’s now turn towards popular agency-related understandings of the exclusion. Within this discourse, it is the deprioritization of football by British Asian communities and families what obstruct the development of football skills and therefore future participation at the elite level (Burdsey 2007: 74). Allegedly, British Asian parents prefer an educational carrier for their children instead of a football carrier. That is why they will not be supportive and therefore exclude a professional football carrier. British Asians are thus suitable for educational carriers, not for football carriers. Again, these statements need to be problematized in terms of heterogeneity and diversity within the British Asian footballers. In other words, structural and agency related explanations are based on simplistic and essentialist models (Burdsey 2007: 77). As a result, football scouts are not paying attention or search for talented football players among British Asians clubs and this creates a vicious circle.

Performance of ‘British Asianness’ in football
We can conclude that notions of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ within the popular understandings are important to understand the exclusion of British Asian footballers in the Premier League. Those notions mark and define the boundaries of British Asians as ‘outsiders’. This is paradoxical because football is celebrated as a colour-blind world where the focus lies on talent, capacity and not on a descent (Carrington 2013: 383). According to Burdsey, it is a complex task for the footballers to break though these explanations because ‘the space where they can best challenge them and prove them to be erroneous- the professional game- remains one which they cannot access’ (2007: 26).

So, how do British Asian footballers react at these dynamics? Burdsey provides a quote of an interview:

‘Looking back I am very thankful that no one asked what it was like being an Asian player. that helped me feel as if I was not under the spotlight, and made me feel very much like one of the lads’ (2007: 68).

The footballers’ identity as ‘Asian’ but at the same time are aware of their ‘Asianness’ as possible ‘threat’ of their carrier. Burdsey analysis this by sketching a dual process: on the one hand, the footballers embrace their Asianness; on the other hand, they ‘deprioritize aspects of their ethnic and cultural identities to gain inclusion as ‘one of the lads’ (2007: 66). He also quotes, in my opinion, an important phrase by Goldberg (1996: 185):

‘Black people are faced with the dilemma that the principal mode of progress and self-elevation open to them is precisely through self-denial, through the effacement, the obliteration, of their blackness. They are predicated, that is, upon the possibility of rendering a significant feature of their self-definition invisible, if not altogether effaced.’

We can understand those dynamics in terms of ‘performance’. Again, I am using the concept of ‘performance’ by Bettie: it ‘refers to agency and a conscious attempt at passing’ (2014:52). British Asian footballers need to perform their ‘identity’ conform to the dominant ideologies concerning British football. They thus have to perform that ‘they absorbed the dominant culture of professional football’ (Burdsey 2007: 69). That is the only way to achieve success in this environment.

Conclusion
Due to stereotyping, ‘professional football is a sphere in which British Asians lack the appropriate ‘cultural passports’, or to use a more appropriate analogy; it is a game in which they are denied an ‘entry ticket” (Burdsey 2007: 71). In popular understandings, British Asians embody structural determinants, regarding the body, eating patterns and religion, and agency related determinants, regarding educational carriers, which obstruct participation at the elite level. In line with Burdsey, I conclude that British Asians have to be aware of their performance of ‘Asianness’ in order to conform to the dominant ideologies. This contains complex dynamics but is the only way to achieve success in the British professional football sphere.

References:

– Besnier, N., S. Brownell & T.F. Carter (2018) The Anthropology of Sport- Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics Oakland, University of California Press
– Bettie, J. (2014) Women without Class- Girls, Race, Identity Oakland, University of California Press.
– Burdsey, D. (2006) British Asians and Football- Culture, Identity, Exclusion Leiden, Taylor & Francis Ltd.
– Carrington, B. (2013). The critical sociology of race and sport: The first fifty years. Annual Review of Sociology 39: 379-398.