Inclusion and Exclusion in Italian Sports – A Conversation with Sandra Kyeremeh

A Conversation with Sandra Kyeremeh.

Undeniably, sports is the one topic that can attract and bring together a large number of people owing to its unifying force and power to build camaraderie. At the same time, sports can also serve as a common ground to start unpacking some less glamorous and more discriminatory aspects tied to gender and race. The processes that govern the access of foreign and 1st and 2nd generation non-citizen athletes to Italian sports leagues and teams are an important lens through which to witness issues related to privilege, discrimination, corruption and identity. Who is “invited” to become an Italian citizen? To what extent do they really “become Italian”? Who is left behind? Sandra Kyeremeh, University of Padua scholar, and author of the 2019 study “Whitening Italian Sports”, will help us answer some of these questions, addressing debate around the introduction of the 2016 “ius soli sportivo” law targeted to foreign minors and the recent scandal surrounding soccer player Luis Suarez’s access to Italian citizenship, among others.

Sandra Kyeremeh graduated from the University of Padua with a major in International Human Rights. After a Master’s in Immigration at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, she obtained a PhD in Social Studies at the University of Padua, with a thesis on gender and race in Italian sports. In 2014 she was a visiting fellow at the University of Amsterdam and Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies and in 2016  at the Leeds Beckett University-School of Sport. Her most recent research project at the University of Padua is on youth without citizenship in Italy and antiracism practices in art.

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