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Within Western resettlement countries, sport has gained increased traction among policy makers, practitioners, and academics as a tool to meet Western neo-liberal policy goals through fostering integration, health and wellbeing, and social inclusion among young people from refugee backgrounds. Yet, considering the complex challenges that these young people experience during their displacement and resettlement journeys, sport and leisure may be a site of further social exclusion, re-traumatization, and agency denial, which may restrict or deny their capabilities with potentially damaging wellbeing and integration consequences.
This paper draws from a three-year long Participatory Action Research study with a refugee charity, BelongHere* in London, England to explore empirically how a Capabilities Approach may be employed to understand key processes in co-designing and delivering sport-based programs to enhance the wellbeing of young people from refugee backgrounds. Eleven interviews with community stakeholders, 16 month-long participant observation, alongside digital diaries and photo voice interviews with 7 young co-researchers were used to collect data. Thematic analysis illustrated that the co-design and delivery of sport and leisure programs at BelongHere impacted upon wellbeing through supporting, restricting, and denying three core capabilities of (1) affiliation to programme staff and peers (2) control over the environment, and (3) bodily integrity. The findings are significant in ensuring community sport and leisure provides opportunities for young people from refugee backgrounds to engage in positive and meaningful wellbeing experiences and enables them and those supporting them to identify, know, and challenge harmful practices that restrict and negate their capabilities.
