Fostering to democracy and participation? : A qualitative study on how sports clubswork with the inclusion of youth people in decision-making processes

The Swedish government issued a statement in 1999, which included that all sports should be conductedfrom a child's rights perspective. This, among other things, involved an ambition to increase children'sand young people's influence on and responsibility for their sporting activities. As sport has beenproblematized as being driven by adults, much emphasis has been placed on how sports clubs work toincrease children's and young people's opportunities to become involved in sports clubs themselves. Thepurpose of this study is to investigate in what ways sports clubs in Northern Sweden work with theinclusion of young people in decision-making processes. The approach we used to collect data wasthrough semi-structured interviews, where we interviewed eight chairpersons in sports clubs’ boards.Data was analyzed with thematic analysis. The results show that clubs are working to create basicconditions, which are described as being prepared to include young people, being attentive to whatchildren and young people want to do, or have opinions about, asking for their opinions, as well as usingmethods to allow children and young people to express themselves, whose opinions form the basis ofdecision-making processes. The results also show that sports clubs have established absolute conditions.This means that children and young people are included in decision-making processes and shareinfluence and responsibility with adults, by, for example, having young people on their board or havingincorporated youth sections, which often get the opportunity to run projects and activities bythemselves. On the other hand, the sports clubs argue for prioritizing the issues in which children andyoung people should be included based on the idea that they understand their responsibility as adultsand have a comprehensive view of the sports clubs’ major areas of responsibility such as finance, staff,and safety