The article highlights research from the paper, entitled 'United Glasgow Football Club: a study in sport's facilitation of integration', which examines whether and how football can help foster the integration of asylum seekers and refugees.
Although some research suggests that sport can enhance ethnic segregation and conflict, the authors of the study conclude that United Glasgow FC succeed in their aim of helping diverse people who might otherwise feel isolated to build social capital and bridge ethnic and cultural divides.
Started by Alan White in 2011, the team compete in the anti-racist Scottish Unity League. 'There are so many nationalities and religions that nobody feels out of place,' he told The Record.
The Working Paper's authors, Olivia Booth, Salvator Cusimano, Evan Elise Easton-Calabria and Elisabeth Kühn, spent five days interviewing and observing team members in Glasgow in January 2013 as part of a group research project on the MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies course.
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United Glasgow Football Club: a study in sport's facilitation of integration
