Street Football, Gender, and Muslim Youth in the Netherlands

"Based on original ethnographic research in a multicultural neighbourhood in The Hague (the Netherlands), this book gives detailed insights into the challenges, negotiations, and resistances girls with Moroccan-Dutch and Muslim backgrounds face in the world of street football, one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Kathrine van den Bogert traces the experiences of teenage girls who play football in the public playgrounds in their neighbourhood, as well as in a girls' football competition the girls have set up themselves: Football Girls United. She addresses how race, ethnicity, religion, and gender are entangled in the access to and construction of the public street football spaces, such as football courts, urban playgrounds, and public squares. While often Muslim girls in football are stigmatised or excluded based on their religious and ethnic backgrounds, this book emphasises their street football practices as critical and creative ways of inclusion and belonging, both in football and in wider Dutch society. By focussing on a domain largely absent in religion and gender research, namely sport, this book brings to the forth new and innovative perspectives on religion, Islam, gender, and difference."--