- The Open University, Department of Education, Department Memberadd
- Cultural Studies, Migration Studies, Sociology of Sport, Ethnography, Race and Racism, Journalism, and 10 moreMedia Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, Youth Studies, Physical Cultural Studies, Urban Cycling, Football (soccer), Transcultural Studies, Racialization, and Anti-Racismedit
- I am a lecturer in the School of Business, Law and Communications at Southampton Solent University. In February 201... moreI am a lecturer in the School of Business, Law and Communications at Southampton Solent University.
In February 2014 I was awarded a FIFA Research Scholarship to undertake a study of young people of immigrant background, football and sense of belonging in Italy. The book 'The Balotelli Generation. Issues of Inclusion and Belonging in Italian Football and Society' was published in October 2016 by Peter Lang.
In February 2019, Routledge will publish my new book: 'Youth Sport, Migration and Culture. Two football teams and the changing face of Ireland'.
Parallel to my academic work, I am an awarded travel writer in my native language Italian. Among my published books: Patagonia Controvento (Patagonia against the wind, 2006), La bici sopra Berlino (The bike over Berlin, 2009). I have further published an essay based on life stories of Italian emigrants and immigrants in Italy - La mia casa è dove sono felice (My home is where I am happy, 2005).edit
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Over the last decade the international governing body of association football, FIFA, has introduced new regulations for the registration of young players. The regulations are aimed at 'protecting minors' at being trafficked from... more
Over the last decade the international governing body of association football, FIFA, has introduced new regulations for the registration of young players. The regulations are aimed at 'protecting minors' at being trafficked from developing countries to clubs based in the majority of cases in Europe. While strengthening control on the status of players as young as ten, the FIFA norms and their intersection with national and European norms have laid the legal basis for forms of institutional discrimination meted out to youth of immigrant background living in Europe. This paper emerges from a study on youth of immigrant background's participation in Italian football. It uses the theoretical framework of Agamben's analysis of Western democracies' citizenship crisis to highlight the contradictions implicit in the Italian FA's implementation of FIFA regulations in a scenario permeated by nationalistic values, which create different levels of participation according to the legal status of young people.
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Football can play different roles in the lives of immigrant youth. It can be a site for leisure, sport performance and socialization. Even more critically, it can be a place where to negotiate sense of belonging to a local community and... more
Football can play different roles in the lives of immigrant youth. It can be a site
for leisure, sport performance and socialization. Even more critically, it can be a
place where to negotiate sense of belonging to a local community and to gain
access to national sporting cultures. Football can also represent forms of
exclusion and discrimination. This article aims to elucidate the meanings that
participation in football hold for black immigrant males in a country of recent
immigration such as the Republic of Ireland. The article discusses the findings
of a long-term ethnographic study with a youth team based in a working-class
area of Dublin, the Irish capital. The youth football club plays a special role as a
term of identification for the local community. Teenage players of different
African backgrounds are presented with the challenge of acquiring different
levels of inclusion. They can attempt to appropriate cultural codes that define
local working-class men on and off the pitch or they can practice forms of
‘resistance’ that emphasize their own racialized positioning in Irish society.
Overall, these dynamics affirm the importance of grassroots football as a venue
for young people’s transcultural encounters
for leisure, sport performance and socialization. Even more critically, it can be a
place where to negotiate sense of belonging to a local community and to gain
access to national sporting cultures. Football can also represent forms of
exclusion and discrimination. This article aims to elucidate the meanings that
participation in football hold for black immigrant males in a country of recent
immigration such as the Republic of Ireland. The article discusses the findings
of a long-term ethnographic study with a youth team based in a working-class
area of Dublin, the Irish capital. The youth football club plays a special role as a
term of identification for the local community. Teenage players of different
African backgrounds are presented with the challenge of acquiring different
levels of inclusion. They can attempt to appropriate cultural codes that define
local working-class men on and off the pitch or they can practice forms of
‘resistance’ that emphasize their own racialized positioning in Irish society.
Overall, these dynamics affirm the importance of grassroots football as a venue
for young people’s transcultural encounters
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It is difficult to talk about emigration and immigration avoiding clichés. This is particularly true in a region like Friuli, which for a long time was a land of emigrants and over the last three decades has started attracting immigrants.... more
It is difficult to talk about emigration and immigration avoiding clichés. This is particularly true in a region like Friuli, which for a long time was a land of emigrants and over the last three decades has started attracting immigrants. It is easy to hear statements like the following: " When we went to work abroad things were different: we had a legal contract" , which shows how people are not yet capable to deal with new migrations. Collecting stories of life of emigrants and immigrants is a way to deconstruct stereotypes and to represent migrations of the past and the present in all their complexities and similarities. This is what the book La mia casa è dove sono felice is about.
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Review Author: Knud Ryom, Aarhus University
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Review Author: Mattias Melkersson - Dept. of Sport Sciences, Malmö University
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Review Author: Christos Kassimeris - School of Humanities, Social and Education Sciences, European University Cyprus
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Review Author: Georg Spitaler - Association for the History of the Labour Movement (VGA), Vienna, Austria
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BOOK REVIEW
Football fandom in Italy and beyond, by Matthew Guschwan, London and
New York, Routledge, 2017, 144 pp., £105.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1138701823
Football fandom in Italy and beyond, by Matthew Guschwan, London and
New York, Routledge, 2017, 144 pp., £105.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1138701823
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More Info: MAURO, Max. Tackling racism and discrimination in grassroots sport. The case of football. In Hassan, D. & Acton, C. (Eds.), Sport and Contested Identities. Contemporary Issues and Debates. London: Routledge, 2017. pp. 228-244.... more
More Info: MAURO, Max. Tackling racism and discrimination in grassroots sport. The case of football. In Hassan, D. & Acton, C. (Eds.), Sport and Contested Identities. Contemporary Issues and Debates. London: Routledge, 2017. pp. 228-244. ISBN 978-0-415-57215-6.
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More Info: MAURO, Max. Transcultural football. Trajectories of belonging among immigrant youth . In O'Gorman, J. (ed) Junior and youth grassroots football culture: the forgotten game. London: Routledge, 2017. pp.. ISBN 978-1138047570.
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Sports governing bodies, governments and European institutions highlight the inclusive power of sport and its capacity to foster a sense of belonging among youth of immigrant background. At the same time, sport at youth and grassroots... more
Sports governing bodies, governments and European institutions highlight the inclusive power of sport and its capacity to foster a sense of belonging among youth of immigrant background. At the same time, sport at youth and grassroots level can be as much an exclusionary as an inclusive experience. As a country of relatively short immigration history and with a great passion for sport, particularly football, Italy makes a compelling case on which to situate an analysis of sport participation of youth of immigrant background and issues of representation in relation to national identity. The book originates from 40 in-depth interviews with young players aged seventeen to twenty-three, born in Italy to immigrant parents or raised in Italy since their childhood. It further collates over thirty interviews and conversations with coaches, club and league administrators, educators, and migrants' rights activists. Analysis of official documents and media analysis further contribute to the construction of a specific body of knowledge which sheds an unprecedented light on issues which are at the forefront of policy discussions and media discourses across Europe.
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Uliano emigrated illegally to Jugoslavia in 1947. Ahmed entered Italy without a work permit in 1989. Luigi runs a construction company in Canada, where he has been living for fifty years. Naiaga runs a furniture company in Italy, where he... more
Uliano emigrated illegally to Jugoslavia in 1947. Ahmed entered Italy without a work permit in 1989. Luigi runs a construction company in Canada, where he has been living for fifty years. Naiaga runs a furniture company in Italy, where he has been living for fifteen years. Ana wants to become an Italian citizen so she will be allowed to vote. She believes that if you vote you are more integrated in the social life. Vittoria lived for seventeen years in Germany, where she always perceived herself as an immigrant. Bozidar was forced to leave Bosnia by the war and today his son speaks Italian better than Serbo-Croatian. Ines’s son learnt German before he learnt his mother-tongue Italian, because the family he grew up illegally in Switzerland was German speaking. At that time, the son of an immigrant with a temporary work permit was not allowed to stay in Switzerland.
Migration stories of some decades ago and migration stories of the recent past. People who left their country of origin to look for a better future abroad, in another country, often in another continent. Stories that start or end in Friuli, an Italian border region who has always been crossed by migrations. Between 1876 and 1976, Friuli being a little developed area, had the highest percentage of emigrants among Italian regions and it later developed into one of the main destinations for immigrants. The book is a collection of life stories that stimulates a dialogue between Italian emigration and immigration. A dialogue which is frequently denied by public discourses which overlook the fact that Italians are still immigrants in many countries. Through oral history and the critical analysis of media and public discourses, this book exposes the changes in Italian society over the last sixty years; a time during which Italy has turned from a country of emigration into a country of immigration.
Migration stories of some decades ago and migration stories of the recent past. People who left their country of origin to look for a better future abroad, in another country, often in another continent. Stories that start or end in Friuli, an Italian border region who has always been crossed by migrations. Between 1876 and 1976, Friuli being a little developed area, had the highest percentage of emigrants among Italian regions and it later developed into one of the main destinations for immigrants. The book is a collection of life stories that stimulates a dialogue between Italian emigration and immigration. A dialogue which is frequently denied by public discourses which overlook the fact that Italians are still immigrants in many countries. Through oral history and the critical analysis of media and public discourses, this book exposes the changes in Italian society over the last sixty years; a time during which Italy has turned from a country of emigration into a country of immigration.
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Thinking Allowed, with Laurie Taylor. BBC Radio 4, 13 April 2016.
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Il Manifesto, 27/12/17
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‘Regionalism and Nationalism in Contemporary International Sport’ International Conference, Vic University, Catalonia, Spain - 29-30 June 2017