eSocSci Migration Research network: Youth in conflict zones and the use of action sports for escape
Channel: e socsci
Date: 17/08/2018

Presenter: Dr. Holly Thorpe, University of Waikato

This paper draws upon interviews conducted over three years with young men living in a refugee camp in Gaza and young Afghan women, who used the networks and connections enabled through their participation in action sports–particularly parkour and skateboarding–to escape their conflict-torn home countries. In so doing, this paper reveals the highly creative strategies and agency of youth in conflict zones, including their use of social media and connections with NGOs to help them migrate. Conducting interviews both before and at various stages after their migration, the deeply affective nature of such mobilities is revealed, including youths’ longing for home, fears for the family and friends left behind, the challenges of resettling, and the ongoing limits and vulnerabilities of their new mobilities.

Presenter Bio:

A sociologist of sport and physical culture, Holly Thorpe is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health, Sport and Human Performance at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She is author of Transnational Mobilities in Action Sport Cultures (2014) and Snowboarding Bodies in Theory and Practice (2011), and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Physical Cultural Studies (2017), Women in Action Sport Cultures (2016), New Sporting Femininities: Embodied Politics in Postfeminist Times (2018) and Sport, Physical Culture and the Moving Body: Materialisms, Technologies and Ecologies (2018). She is a recipient of a Marsden Fast-Start (2016), Fulbright and Leverhulme Fellowships.