New Spaces of Belonging: Soccer Teams of Bolivian Migrants in São Paulo, Brazil
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New spaces of belonging: Soccer teams of Bolivian migrants in São Paulo, Brazil Julia Haß and Stephanie Schütze Resumo: Pretende-se analisar a formação de espaços de pertencimento no contexto do futebol amador de imigrantes latino-americanas em São Paulo. A criação de times de futebol amador por imigrantes latino- americanos é um fenômeno muito comum em cidades globais. O Brasil tem sido um país central de destino de migrações nas últimas três décadas, particularmente de imigrantes da América do Sul e do Caribe. Para os imigrantes peruanos, bolivianos e paraguaios, a prática de futebol representa uma apropriação do espaço urbano para reuniões esportivas, culturais e sociais. No contexto de torneios e times expressa-se e manifesta-se a origem da mesma nação, região e localidade. Ao mesmo tempo, o futebol amador cumpre uma função integradora para os imigrantes. Desde o final dos anos 1990, há campeonatos de futebol amador de times femininos de migrantes em São Paulo. Esta pesquisa concentra-se nas estratégias transculturais e de gênero de apropriação do espaço no contexto do futebol amador feminino de imigrantes latino-americanos em São Paulo. Palavras chave: Migração Sul-Americana, mulheres, São Paulo, futebol amador, espaços de pertencimento Introduction Bom Retiro, São Paulo It is Sunday afternoon around 4 p.m. From the outside, the soccer club looks unassuming in a small street in Bom Retiro, in the center of São Paulo. Walls and a metal gate block the view of the interior of the club. However, as we enter, the scenario changes. In front of us a clubhouse and a snack bar come into sight. Women in soccer outfits bustle between the clubhouse and the snack bar or wait standing at a handful of plastic tables and chairs. A mixture of Spanish and Portuguese is spoken. From the clubhouse comes Spanish disco music. Opposite the snack bar the fútsal court is located, where a match takes place. Two women teams with five players each compete against each other. It is a group-phase game of the migrant-fútsal-tournament in Bom Retiro. Now Ely, the organizer of the tournament welcomes us and tells us today's program: Her team Rumberas has already played, but four more games are still coming up. Later in the evening, there is a party at the clubhouse. Together with players from Ely's teams, we watch the games. Beer and soft drinks are served. The space around the fútsal court fills. When the final game of the day is kicked off at around 8 p.m., a large audience of players, children, young men and young women from Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru and Brazil in chic evening clothes have gathered. They are waiting for the last part of the tournament and the weekend to begin – the party. In this article, we examine the significance of soccer as space of belonging in the context of migration. It is based on ethnographic observations among female amateur soccer teams of Bolivian migrants in the neighborhood of Bom Retiro, in the center of São Paulo. The upcoming of migrant amateur soccer teams 1 Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 11 & 13th Women’s Worlds Congress (Anais Eletrônicos), Florianópolis, 2017, ISSN 2179-510X and tournaments is a common phenomenon in many cities around the world: not only in Brazil, but also in other metropolises in Latin America as well as in major cities in the United States and in European migrants found soccer teams. This can be interpreted both as a means to maintain or reshape migrants’ ‘sense of belonging’ to their community of origin as well as a means of ‘integration’ into the host society. On the one hand, soccer represents an appropriation of space for social gathering, whereby the shared origin from a specific nation, region and sometimes even locality is expressed. On the other hand, playing soccer as a leisure activity can be seen as a mode of integration into the host society since amateur soccer is a widespread and popular sport in Brazil. Without disregarding these two interpretations, we argue that in migrant amateur soccer the appropriation of space takes place on the basis of transcultural strategies that interweave heterogeneous procedural cultural practices. Further, we assume that constructions of gender are visible in these transcultural spaces in a special way (Schütze and Zapata Galindo 2007). In this article, particular attention is paid to migrant women’s amateur soccer teams who claim space in the male-dominated sport. In Brazil, soccer courts have been dominated by men for decades and have been central places of male socialization for a long time (Damo 2005). Whereas both in Brazil and Bolivia soccer has become a popular sport for women in the last decades, ‘sport spaces’ are still characterized by asymmetric power structures and mechanisms of exclusion (Van Ingen 2003). Gender, social class and cultural origin are criteria to exclude individuals from sport activities and the places where they are practiced. However, sports facilities can become ‘contested spaces’, when a discriminated group of people questions existing power relationships, which then have to be renegotiated (Enke 2007). By asking for spaces of belonging created in the context of Bolivian female amateur soccer teams in São Paulo, the article analyzes new internal migration patterns in South America. Although in the last decades Brazil has increasingly become a recipient country of migrations from neighboring South American countries, these recent migration trends have so far been studied very little. Following the definition of Jorge Durand, ‘migration pattern’ refers to the type, model, and path that delimitates fundamental features of migration processes (Durand 2011). In this case, the recent migration of Bolivians to São Paulo shares common characteristics: migrants are from low income backgrounds, they migrate at a young age and both men and women mostly to work in São Paulo’s textile industry, especially in sewing studios. During two research stays in São Paulo in December 2015 and April 2016, we mapped different spaces of social encounter of Bolivian migrants in São Paulo and conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the districts of Bom Retiro and Brás, where many Bolivian migrants live and work. There the sewing studios, where the majority of Bolivians work, concentrate today; also, many of the migrant amateur soccer tournaments take place in these neighborhoods. 2 Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 11 & 13th Women’s Worlds Congress (Anais Eletrônicos), Florianópolis, 2017, ISSN 2179-510X The article is structured as follows: First, the research on soccer, migration and gender, as well as the central theoretical approaches to spaces of belonging in the context of migrant soccer are discussed. After a presentation of the current migration dynamics to Brazil, and especially the recent migration of Bolivians, the following sections deal with migrant amateur soccer in São Paulo and the league in Bom Retiro. Finally, we analyze the appropriation of spaces of belonging in the context of the league in Bom Retiro based on our ethnographic observations. Soccer, migration gender and spaces of belonging This study builds on research that understands soccer as a space of interaction where social, cultural and gender differences are negotiated. Although soccer already became a widespread and important social phenomenon in Europe and Latin America since the middle of the 20th century, it has not been an important focus of research for a long time. Some of the first publications on the social importance of soccer where published in Brazil: In the 1960s, the journalist Marco Rodrigues Filho (1964) published a book about the processes of exclusion and inclusion of Afro-Brazilians in Brazilian soccer. His critical social analysis of soccer influenced the work of Brazilian social scientists during the following decades. Nevertheless, it was not until the publication of Roberto Da Matta (1982) on soccer as a socially contested space, that the sport became an important subject of study. In the United Kingdom, Desmond Morris (1981) dealt almost simultaneously with soccer as a social phenomenon from an anthropological perspective. His understanding of soccer clubs as complex social spaces became an inspiration to social scientists in the 1990s, such as to the French anthropologist Christian Bromberger (1995) or the sociologists Richard Giulianotti and Gary Armstrong (1997). The book of anthropologist Eduardo Archetti (1999) on the relationship between soccer, national identity and masculinity in Argentina constitutes another key work for the social and cultural research on soccer. Since the late 1990s, anthropological, historical and sociological research on gender dynamics in soccer has increasingly been published in Europe, focusing on female amateur and professional soccer (e. g. Faust 2014; Pfister et al. 1998) as well as on homosexuality and masculinity (e. g. Heissenberger 2012; Kreisky and Spitaler 2006). In Brazil, a wide range of research on soccer and gender has been published over the last few years: Silvana Vilodre Goellner (2005), who analyzes Brazilian soccer from a gender-critical perspective, explains the mechanisms by which the dominance of men in Brazilian soccer has been produced and strengthened. Carmen Rial (2013) explains the wider societal implications of the exclusion of women from Brazilian soccer in the 20th century. More recent contributions to the Brazilian anthropology of sport, such as Alana Mara Alves Gonçalves (2002), Arlei Damo (2005) and Rafael Fermino Beverari (2009), illustrate the central importance of Brazilian amateur soccer as a space of male conviviality and socialization. Gender 3 Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 11 & 13th Women’s Worlds Congress (Anais Eletrônicos), Florianópolis, 2017, ISSN 2179-510X differences in soccer also play a major role in the ethnography of Mariana Da Silva Pisani (2014), who considers women's amateur soccer as a space of female empowerment. In the past two decades, there has also been an increased interest in research on soccer in the context of Latin American migration in the Americas and Europe.