Research Questions
Informal sport, social resilience & social capital
What physical, emotional and social benefits does participation in informal sport offer new migrants especially those most vulnerable like refugees, temporary migrant workers and international students?
To what extent does participation generate social capital through supportive social networks that share knowledge and information about jobs, health, housing and education, and facilitate a greater sense of belonging?
What are the group dynamics of informal sporting teams and how do the negotiation of these relationships assist new migrants to participate in the wider receiving society and its institutions including civic associations such as club sport?
To what extent does informal sport offer opportunities to bridge ethnic differences within and beyond the sporting field including bridging connections between new migrants and local citizens?
Migration & Urban Citizenship
How does inclusion/exclusion play out in informal sport for new migrants? Class, race, migrant status, gender and generation will be considered as significant factors.
How do these experiences link with participation in or exclusion from formal sport and the public spaces in which it occurs?
How common are so called ‘parallel’ ethnic leagues and so they emerge from informal sport? Why do they form and how are they organised and administered?
Are 'parallel leagues' more common among particular groups of migrants? Have mainstream sporting bodies reached out to them, and if so, what was the outcome?
What ways do the most vulnerable and marginalised migrants (including refugees, asylum seekers and temporary migrant workers) make claims on public space through informal sport?
Does the presence of regular informal games in public spaces enhance neighbourhood liveability and how is informal sporting activity transformative for other users of public space?
Urban governance, public space & privatisation
How do the opportunity structures of private, quasi (ticketed) and public spaces and modes of urban governance shape opportunities for informal sporting participation.
Are there patterns and trends in privatisation and quasi-privatisation that are diminishing places to play informal sport?
Where and why is this happening and is this impacting who can play informal sport and the conditions under which they may do so?
Do factors such as competition with club sport for space, fees and access to facilities, and semi-public spaces within high-rise housing developments mattrer?.
Built Environment & Public Space
Through international comparison, we aim to throw light on how different traditions and contemporary trends in the design and use of the built environment and public space shape opportunities for informal sporting participation.
How do the design, atmospheres, accessibility and management of public leisure space intersect with bottom-up informal sporting practices to produce experiences of difference and conflict, locality and sociality?
To what extent are the authorities and planners tasked with the provisioning, management and design of public leisure spaces cognisant of informal team sport,
What design features, regulations and facilities do they deem necessary, if any?
What issues, challenges and barriers do they note in provisioning for informal team sport?
Why Sydney & Singapore?
The regulations, traditions and styles of public space and public sporting facilities are distinctive in each city and they have largely differed in nature of urban density and how public space is built into the urban fabric.
As a traditionally suburban city, Sydney’s recreational spaces have typically come in the form of wide open spaces. However, it is currently moving through a period of rapid urban densification and population growth and without any corresponding increase in public parks and space. Inaccessibility is further evident in long travel times to parks and sporting fields.
Singapore merits comparison as a ‘high rise city’ and the most densely populated country in the world. The government authority (HDB) that oversees the development of public housing in Singapore, which houses 80% of the population, has consistently ensured the provision of recreational spaces for casual sport within every housing estate and these undergo constant upgrade. Play and leisure spaces are also co-located with outdoor eateries and ‘void decks’ of shaded seating integrating leisure and play into everyday life as opposed to being a ‘destination’ activity. However, fully public spaces for casual sport and recreation outside of these estates are rarer with fee based facilities predominating and strong efforts are made to exclude migrant workers from accessing these spaces.
As Australian cities transition into higher density neighbourhoods there are lessons to learn from both the successes and failings of Singapore’s urban strategy particularly its accommodation of vulnerable migrants. Sydney is now a top destination city to work and study for temporary migrants but, like in Singapore, these migrants are increasingly occupying precarious positions in the city where they find themselves excluded from the public arena.
Comparison helps to draw out how concepts and shared processes work in different cities (such as differences in migrant status and incorporation, neoliberal modes of urban governance, and circulating policy regimes) and how different forms of built environment and public space shape social outcomes or how the same form (such as high rise density) may play out differently in different places, allowing insight into intervening processes.