By Shana Sabbe, Lieve Bradt, Ramón Spaaij & Rudi Roose
In recent decades, practices have emerged that combine sport-based and social work strategies with the objective to tackle social problems through the use of sport as a tool. This article focuses on community sport as a particular practice due to its unique structural potential in combatting social inequality. However, it is still unknown how this potential translates into the daily approaches of community sport practitioners. In order to bridge this empirical gap, an analytical framework of two distinctive strategies of structural work (inside-out and outside-in) is constructed as a lens to investigate the structural approaches of community sport practitioners. Drawing upon a qualitative case study in Flanders, Belgium, the findings highlight the need for developing holistic approaches to structural work within sport-based social interventions in general and in the practice of community sport in particular. The authors reflect on the impact of the emergence of sport-based social interventions with regard to the core business of social work of promoting social justice.
‘We’d like to eat bread too, not grass’: Exploring the structural approaches of community sport practitioners in Flanders