A football bounces across borders : A qualitative interview study on integration in compound football

Integration and sport plays a big part in today's society. By being a part of a sport club most immigrants experience coherence with the other club members and it helps them to learn the Swedish language and culture. The purpose of this essay is to find out how sport clubs work with - and implements - integration. It is a qualitative interview study where two sport clubs in Umeå have been selected, in association with Umeå municipality, according to specific criteria. Five people in each club have been interviewed. This type of study was chosen because it gives the opportunity to collect the respondent’s perceptions and experiences, and it will also create an opportunity for further arguments and developed answers.The result of the study show that the consultants in each sport club had knowledge about the integration policy and guidelines and the team leaders did not. It also showed that the sport club who had worked with integration projects in the past and had an ongoing project at the moment had more immigrant members. The ongoing project consists of a drop-in activity where football practices are arranged once a week. The second sport club does not intend to do anything else than their regular activities because of the energy and time it would take