The Beautiful Game? Soccer, Intergroup Contact and Syrian-Lebanese Tolerance

• In Event: Experiments on Intergroup Relations

Abstract

Can sustained intergroup contact improve native-refugee relations and social integration in contexts of pervasive prejudice and mistrust? In spite of a large and increasingly sophisticated literature on the contact hypothesis, surprisingly little research speaks to this question. Very few contact studies focus on interactions among recently arrived migrants or refugees and members of host communities, and the existing literature on immigrant integration typically draws on observational rather than experimental data. This paper presents results from a sports-based field experiment that brings together 440 Syrian and Lebanese youth (ages 13-14) for several months of soccer practice and league play in Beirut and Beqaa, Lebanon, where Syrian refugees make up approximately 25% of the local population (and intergroup relations are often tense). We randomly assign subjects to homogeneous (Lebanese or Syrian) or heterogeneous soccer teams and ask whether contact of this form can (a) reduce prejudiced attitudes, (b) reduce discriminatory behavior, (c) shape perceived norms about appropriate intergroup social interactions, (d) improve refugee social integration, and (e) improve refugee mental health. We also exploit variation in an accompanying “life skills curriculum” to ask whether contact interventions that include explicit peace messaging produce different results than those that do not.

Authors

• Alexandra Scacco, WZB Berlin Social Science Center

• Salma Mousa, Stanford University