Paper Presentation III:
Identities
Friday, April 9, 10.30–12.30
Gauffres and Guinness: Football fandom among Irish migrants in Belgium
Adrian Beiu
Université Libre de Bruxelles, CEVIPOL
According to the official Belgian statistics[1], there were 3522 Irish people living in Belgium in 2007. Their actual number is probably much higher, since many of the migrants, blue collar workers as well as trained professionals, may choose not to be registered with the Belgian authorities. This is a simple task since the 90 days every 6 months rule[2] is easily eluded by EU citizens since their travelling documents are not stamped upon arrival in Belgium. Moreover, in addition to the Irish passports bearers, there are a number of British subjects that come from Northern Ireland or from an Irish background and they may choose to consider themselves to be Irish rather than British[3].
The aim of this article is to provide an overview on some of the Irish migrants in Belgium preference for football clubs. More specifically, we will question the Irish members of two sport clubs: FC Irlande and the Belgium Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club. FC Irlande, an Irish football club in Belgium, was established in 1989 and includes 5 teams. Roughly 1/3 of the club members are Irish. The Belgian section of the Irish GAA is of somewhat more recent date. The percentage of Irish players is much higher and[4], although preliminary observations allows us to say that GAA sports are the members’ primary sporting activity, most of them have a certain interest in soccer.
The two main hypothesis are that, despite the migrants’ patriotism and fervent support for the representative team of the Republic of Ireland, they will tend to support English football teams rather then Irish ones and that our subjects are almost completely oblivious to the Belgian football scene.
The main tool to be used for assessing our subjects’ preference for certain football clubs is the survey. This part of our analysis will actually consist of two, slightly different, surveys applied to the Irish members of the two clubs. When a person is a member of both clubs, only the survey destined to the Irish members of the GAA team will be applied.
A few short interviews, with random members of the clubs, will second this quantitative study.
[2] According to the present legislation, citizens of the EU as well as those of other selected countries do not need to register with the local authorities as far as their staying is not longer than 90 days in a 6 months interval.
[4] We will be able to give, by March the 15th, the exact percentage of Irish players in both clubs.
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