I Introduction
‘We live in a world that seems increasingly divided, and dangerously so, between an ascendant high-tech global culture and a persistent web of fierce particularistic loyalties’, observed Samuel Scheffler more than a decade ago (Scheffler, Reference Scheffler1995/2001, p. 47). This observation remains apposite to our era. However, there are many truths and many kinds of truths as well as exceptions. The internationalist spirit characterising the Olympic movement constitutes an exception. Pierre de Coubertin's belief that the Olympic Games are intended to promote ‘international respect and goodwill thereby helping to construct a better and more peaceful world’ (MacAloon, Reference Macaloon1981)Footnote 1 leads us to perceive the Games as the seedbed of global citizenship in a world shaped by the particularistic loyalties (Roche, Reference Roche2002). While this may be true to an extent, if we turn our gaze to the past, we see that the Games have been used as a surface for the inscription of narratives of nationhood and a rather noisy arena of citizenship politics.
Notwithstanding the discourse of internationalism and the goal of ‘building a peaceful and better world’ (Samaranch, Reference Samaranch1995) through friendly competition and sporting excellence,Footnote 2 it is true that the Olympic Games have never been ‘people’s Olympics'. Athletes take part in them following selection by national committees, parade under the national flag in the opening ceremony and receive their medals on the playing of national anthems. One cannot compete as a stateless person.Footnote 3 Historically, the Olympian athlete has thus been a homo nationalis. In addition, since the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, one cannot easily disentangle the Olympics from what we term ‘nationpolitics’ (Strenk, Reference Strenk1978). Host states have used them for a ‘variety of nationalist reasons’ (Roche, Reference Roche, Delanty and Kumar2006, p. 264) and for the promotion of foreign policy objectives, be they the promotion of the international recognition of new states, boycotting objectionable regimes, promoting nationalist ideology abroad or rebranding nationhood domestically. In other words, the Games have been ‘nation-states’ Olympics' and the achievements of athletes wearing the national vest have served as a means of accentuating national identity, enhancing the prestige of a nation and affirming national imagined communities (King, Reference King2003). Olympians are deemed to be nations' heroes; they are seen to embody national communities' spirit and values. Conversely, when circumstances deprive them of this status, if, for instance, they choose to represent another country or to defect to other countries, as East European athletes did in the post Cold War era, or if a government decides to erase their citizenship status, as was the case with German athletes of Jewish descent following the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935,Footnote 4 they become traitors.
The advent of globalisation has brought about significant changes not only to the Olympic Games, but also to nation-states and national citizenship as well as to athletes' identities. It has also transformed their interlocking interactions. The Games are now a global ‘spectacle’ (Gruneau, Reference Gruneau and Wenner1989), a ‘mega-event’ (Roche, Reference Roche2002, Reference Roche, Delanty and Kumar2006) at the mercy of commercial interests (Tomlinson, Reference Tomlinson1996). The traditional one-to-one correspondence between the Olympic movement and the nation-states has been disrupted by what may be termed the sport / media / sponsor and advertiser complex.Footnote 5 The International Olympic Committee (IOC), on the other hand, has asserted its authority as an international non-governmental organisation and has been empowered vis-à-vis the states. Similarly, statehood has been affected by economic globalisation, the deepening of European integration and the complex dynamics of governance and claims-making above (international organisations and networks) and below (civil society and regions) the state and sideways (the markets). Accordingly, national citizenship laws and policies oscillate between processes of de-ethnicisation and re-ethnicisation following security concerns in the new millennium (Joppke, Reference Joppke2003; Kostakopoulou, Reference Kostakopoulou2006). Internal societal differentiation, the increase in international mobility, the recognition of the heterogeneous nature of publics (Young, Reference Young1990), and the emergence of post-national notions of citizenship associated with universal human rights and constructive notions of European citizenship, all have made the transnational and supranational integral parts of national and local life. Dual citizenship is no longer an anomaly (Spiro, Reference Spiro2010), but a common occurrence, and national identifications are no longer the sole guarantors of rights. Liberal democratic states have no choice but to respect the human rights of all persons on their territory and citizens are social agents endowed with rights and enjoying multiple identifications and reflexive membership in different, co-existing circles of belonging (Kostakopoulou, Reference Kostakopoulou1996). Similarly, athletes are no longer simply nations' representatives, but they are also product endorsers, magnets for global advertising campaigns and celebrities.
Globalised markets and the transnationalisation of states have given rise to opportunities for selection, preparation and high-quality training and for ‘citizenship tourism’. The latter has been facilitated by the disengagement of the state from the nation and the demotion of nationalism to banal nationalism (Billig, Reference Billig1995) as states seek increased recognition and prestige in a globalised world. Loose connections with a host state therefore have resulted in quick naturalisations for Russian and Belarusian pole-vaulters in Australia (Tatiana Grigorieva and Dimitri Markov), Australian cyclists in Germany, US basketball players for Russia and for triathletes who leave Australia in order to compete wearing the national vests of Canada (Simon Whitfield), New Zealand (Rina Hill) or England (Claire Carney). The same trends are observed in international football events such as the World Cup and the UEFA Euro. The French national football team that won the World Cup final in 1998 fielded players who did not have ties to French clubs, while the Greek national team that won the 2004 European Championship had a German manager (Mr Otto Rehhagel). Similarly, Ireland's national football team has had to include players who would not have qualified to play for Ireland in the past, such as Andy Townshend and Tony Cascarino, who had a single Irish ancestor (King, Reference King, Delanty and Kumar2006).
But what are the implications of the evolving links among the Olympics, nation-states and citizenship? To what extent do the Olympics and, more generally speaking, the transnationalisation of sport alter our conceptions of citizenship and belonging? Does Olympic citizenship challenge traditional understandings of community membership by calling into question the privileged status of birthright citizenship and by bringing forth a different, more fluid and changeable notion of belonging? And further, what does the future hold for Olympic citizenship, particularly in the light of the proliferation of civic integration tests in the new millennium?
In this paper we address the above questions by examining quite closely the links among sport, allegiance and nationality. Our lens is informed by both regional, that is, a European Union-based, and international perspectives. We shed light onto the tension between the fluidity of community belonging and fixed categories of membership (Horváth, Reference Horváth2008) and seek to develop a broader perspective on how the Olympic Games could trigger more imaginative conceptions of citizenship and belonging. Our argument is built on three steps. First, we examine the evolving relation between sports, citizenship and allegiance in the European Union. We then turn to the past in order to examine the impact of national citizenship politics on the Olympics (1896–1976) and the implications of transnationalism for the Olympics, the state and national citizenship (1980–2008). In the third section, we examine possible scenarios for the future and explore avenues for institutional reform. These range from maintaining the entanglement of Olympic citizenship with athletes' country of nationality and the introduction of tighter rules to prevent ‘citizenship shopping’ to the transformation of the Olympics into people's (or athletes') Olympics and the ensuing development of a market citizenship which may increase spectatorship and global competitiveness, but may ultimately lead to the domination of the event by certain wealthy countries. In between this continuum of rooted membership, on the one hand, and rootless cosmopolitanism, on the other, there exist the possibilities of a flexible and plural framework of national citizenship which would accommodate athletes' naturalisation following residence for three yearsFootnote 6 as well as a denationalised framework based on short periods of domicile (Kostakopoulou, Reference Kostakopoulou1996), which would allow athletes to choose the country they intend to represent. This discussion and possible objections to our arguments are contained in the final section of this paper.
II. Sport, citizenship and allegiance in the European Union: the regional story
In National Thought in Europe, Leerssen traces the evolution of nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe and comments on the shift from a cultural identification without any political intent to a political programme containing a ‘natural’ right of peoples to collective self-determination. Accordingly, nationality became a ‘transcendent moral imperative beyond politics’ manifested in a ‘sacred love of the fatherland’ (Leerssen, Reference Leerssen2006, p. 143). It is against the background of romantic nationalism that the revival of the modern Olympic Games took place (Shachar, Reference Shachar2011, p. 2133). The romantic ideas of allegiance and natural belonging to nations have been subject to erosion, but they have not vanished altogether. Increases in international mobility and economic globalisation have resulted in ‘citizenship tourism’ and the ‘race for talent’ (Shachar, Reference Shachar2006). Nevertheless, a discourse on national identity has always remained relevant. The paradox of reconciling transnational environments and persistent particularistic loyalties also finds expression in the institution of European Union citizenship.
European Union citizenship, which was established by the Maastricht Treaty (TEU) (in force on 1 November 1993), has been described as a top-down project (Schulz-Forberg and Stråth, Reference Schulz-Forberg and Stråth2010) and a long-term aspiration of political leaders from throughout Europe that was gradually translated into laws and policies (Maas, Reference Maas2007). Although it entails the promise of a common European identity and of a shared civic patriotism, it is acknowledged that the creation of a citizenship status is not enough to realise that promise. Could the European Union use sport as a means for the inscription of narratives of a shared European identity and belonging? Or would such an initiative contravene the Treaty's explicit pronouncement that the European Union shall respect the national identities of the Member States?Footnote 7 The obligation to respect the national identities of the Member States can be seen as an attempt to reconcile the objectives of promoting tolerance, social learning and trust inherent in European integration with the acknowledgement that different national identities are not going to be superseded by a European one (Besselink, Reference Besselink2010). But are national identities and the allegiance they presuppose affected by the expedited naturalisation of athletes? And to what extent has European Union citizenship altered the perception of nationality as the expression of a special bond of allegiance between an individual and her/his state of nationality? In the subsequent sections we search for answers to these questions by examining the position of sport in the EU legal framework and its contribution to the gradual erosion of the idea that nationality requires exclusive allegiance.
2.1 Sport and citizenship narratives in the European Union
Article 165 TFEU acknowledges that the European Union has supporting and complementing competences in the field of sport. Its first paragraph provides that the EU ‘shall contribute to the promotion of European sporting issues, while taking account of the specific nature of sport, its structures based on voluntary activity and its social and educational function’.Footnote 8 Notably, the EU shall aim at developing the European dimension in sport and foster co-operation with third countries and the competent international organisations.Footnote 9 What does the European dimension in sport mean? One could make a distinction analogous to that made by psychologists between outward-looking nationalism and more inwardly focused patriotism (Bonikowski, Reference Bonikowski2008). Analogous to the dualism in the relationship between the Olympic Games and nation-states, a European dimension in sport may be directed towards competition with out-group others and internal cohesion building and identity development. Nevertheless, the ‘specific nature of sport’ has to be taken into account.Footnote 10 This specific nature is found both in the specificity of activities and sporting rules, such as limitations on the number of participants in competitions or the need to preserve the competitive balance between clubs taking part in the same competitions as well as in the specificity of the sport structure in Europe, which includes the organisation of sport on a national basis (European Commission, 2007).Footnote 11 Both the promotion of a European dimension and the specificity of sport provide the context in which nationality conditions in sport have to be assessed.
In its 2011 Communication on Developing the European Dimension in Sport, the Commission builds on its 2007 White Paper on Sport and the accompanying ‘Pierre de Coubertin’ Action Plan for the period July 2007 to December 2012 (European Commission, 2011a). Actions under this programme refer to the societal role of sport, its economic dimensions and organisation. The general impression one gets from the implementation report of the Action Plan (European Commission, 2010a) is that the European dimension is aimed at inward activities (i.e. improving public health, the fight against doping, volunteering, social inclusion, the fight against racism, co-operation and data exchange between Member States and a structural dialogue with sport stakeholders) and promoting the visibility of the EU at sporting events. Outward-looking competition is only present in the launch of a study to assess the sport sector's contribution to the Lisbon Agenda, not in connection to any direct out-group competition – although, arguably, the aim of the Lisbon Strategy set by the European Council in March 2000, ‘to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (European Council, 2000), has an outward-looking competitive aspect. More relevant for our purposes are two actions included in the Pierre de Coubertin Action Plan which focus on nationality, that is, the combating of discrimination based on nationality and promoting access to individual sport competitions for non-nationals, because they have a more immediate effect on our ideas of nationality as a marker of loyalty and affection.
But it is not only the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of nationality that features centrally in the Commission's 2011 Communication. Mobility, too, is deemed to be important for community building and the development of a shared sense of belonging. This reflects citizenship narratives, as the ability to move freely within a common political space is seen as a necessary condition for creating and sustaining a shared political community (Maas, Reference Maas2007, p. 117). The narrative's impact moves beyond the economic realm of professional sport. The Commission explicitly considers that the prohibition of any discrimination on grounds of nationality also applies to amateur sport (European Commission, 2011a, p. 11) and proposes to include sport-related qualifications of both professionals and volunteers in the European Qualification Framework in order to foster increasing mobility. Additionally, the Communication clearly signals that sport enables immigrants and the host society to interact in a positive way (European Commission, 2011a, p. 6). But, as the history of the Olympic Games attests, the picture is more complex. Sporting competitions can also fuel outward-group antipathy. For this reason, the Commission also acknowledges the need to support activities aimed at fighting racism, xenophobia and intolerance in contemporary sporting environments across the European Union.Footnote 12
Besides these two important dimensions, the impact assessment accompanying the 2011 Communication underlines the strong link between the development of a European dimension in sport and ‘the overarching objectives laid down in the EU 2020 Strategy in terms of sustainable growth, fighting unemployment, reinforcing social inclusion and advancing people's Europe’ (European Commission, 2011b, p. 14). One can easily see this as an overall narrative of citizenship politics, where sport contributes to both economic and wider societal aims. Clearly, this is not a narrative of nationhood; indeed, the impact assessment depicts nationality conditions as problematic in the context of free movement and sport in the transnational environment of the EU. Of course, this does not mean that nationality can never be a condition for access to sport, as rulings of the Court of Justice (CJEU) on the composition of national teams have demonstrated. It might be worth examining this case-law briefly, as it is indicative of a changing perspective on nationality as a marker of loyalty and affection to the state.
2.2 Rooted membership and nationality restrictions
Already in 1974 the CJEU in Walrave and Koch stated that the prohibition on discrimination based on nationality ‘does not affect the position of sport teams, in particular national teams, the formation of which is a question of purely sporting interest and as such has nothing to do with economic activity’.Footnote 13 In this case, not many words were spilt on this finding: AG Warner stated in his Opinion that this was a ‘matter of common sense’. In 1976, in the Donà case, the Court restricted the exception from the question of the formation of teams in competitions to ‘excluding foreign players from participation in certain matches for reasons which are not of an economic nature, which relate to the particular nature and context of such matches and are thus of sporting interest only, such as, for example, matches between national teams from different countries’.Footnote 14
But in Bosman, AG Lenz qualified the Court's ruling that the rule that only players who possess the nationality of a state can play in that country's national team is consistent with Community law as ‘obvious and convincing’, but added that it is not easy to state the reasons for it. He referred to the fact that matches between national teams have considerable financial significance and can no longer be considered as ‘not of an economic nature’.Footnote 15 Furthermore, he asserted that the exception cannot be considered as one of the exceptions given by the Treaty, notably based on public policy, public security or public health reasons. Nor can a ‘national aspect’ be found in the identification of spectators with the teams, which becomes clear when one considers the fact that clubs bearing the name of a town include players not originating from that town and yet spectators identify with the team.Footnote 16 Furthermore, managers of national teams are not always nationals, even though they largely determine the style of play.Footnote 17 The Court in general concurred with the Opinion of its Advocate General, especially on the lack of a ‘national aspect’ in matches that are not between national teams. But it repeated the statement it had made in Donà that an exception applies to matches between national teams from different countries without elaborating on this. One could cite as an explanation the Court's subsequent rejection of nationality clauses for all official matches between clubs, which are not ‘specific matches between teams representing their countries’.Footnote 18 However, this phrasing also raises a number of questions. Why is it that only nationals can represent a country? Is there a need for the existence of a special link or allegiance with the state, comparable to the Court's functional definition of the public service exceptions? And if this is the case, does it matter whether we consider matches between national teams as matches between countries or not? Should we highlight here the importance of Rule 6 of the Olympic Charter which states: ‘The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries’ (International Olympic Committee, 2013, p. 21)? And further, would that imply, as it has been argued, that athletes should be able to choose the country they want to represent (Ayres, Reference Ayres2008)?
In 1995, the Dutch speed skater Bart Veldkamp changed his nationality and became Belgian in order to avoid compliance with the strict Dutch qualification contests for the Olympics.Footnote 19 He participated five times in the Olympic Winter Games. He won two medals representing the Netherlands (1992, 1994) and one medal representing Belgium (1998). In 1998, this ‘alien’ status did not hinder Dutch Crown Prince (now King) Willem Alexander from inviting and including Veldkamp, and another former Dutch speed skater representing Austria, in the festivities, and from calling him ‘a Belgian with a lot of Dutch blood in his veins’ (Gerritse, Reference Gerritse1998, p. 2). On his return from the Games, Veldkamp also took part in a celebration ceremony in Brussels. Both the Netherlands and Belgium seemed to accept nationality as a mere formal condition to represent the country in the Olympics, and no references to allegiance or loyalty were made.
The acceptance of nationality as a purely formal condition for participation in a national team taking part in national competitions qualifies this condition as a ‘simple’ sporting rule akin to the rule that there are separate competitions for men and women. On this understanding, the ‘obvious and convincing’ rule that only nationals can participate in a national team is justified on the basis of the specificity of the competition, and not on a presumed bond of allegiance between the players and the state they represent.Footnote 20 This is juxtaposed with the existence of nationality conditions with respect to access to employment in public service (Article 45(4) TFEU) and exercise of official authority (Article 51 TFEU), since the latter are deemed to require a special relation of allegiance to the state. The exclusion of non-nationals in such cases has also been authorised by international law instruments, such as the European Convention on Establishment of 1955 (Article 13), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 21-2) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 25), as it appears to be a consequence of the principle of nationality underlying international relations and the notion of an independent state (Handoll, Reference Handoll1998, p. 224). Historically, there are a number of reasons linking public service employment and the exercise of public authority with nationality. Beenen identifies three arguments (Beenen, Reference Beenen2001, p. 71). The loyalty argument presumes a certain bond between nationals and their ‘own’ nation-state. Nationals speak the language fluently, know the culture and are thus deemed to be natural representatives of the population. The argument of preventing foreign influence is important when public service or public authority involves public security aspects or the handling of sensitive information. According to Beenen, the third justification is underpinned by a concern to protect the domestic labour market–an argument that is not apposite to the European Union.
Most Member States of the EU see access to public service employment as a right linked to national citizenship. Certain activities carried out by the state or in the name of the state should be performed by nationals, in the same way that national electoral rights are traditionally confined to nationals (Ziller, Reference Ziller2011, p. 9). But the Court has confined ‘the exercise of public authority’ to those posts that ‘in fact presume on the part of those occupying them the existence of a special relationship of allegiance to the state and reciprocity of rights and duties which form the foundations of the bond of nationality’.Footnote 21 By adopting a functional approach and a progressively more rigorous approach to the exception, referring to ‘very strict conditions’,Footnote 22 the Court has narrowed the application of the public service exception. True, one could put forward an argument for the further narrowing of the exception if the conception of allegiance underpinning nationality is redefined given the fact that the special relationship of allegiance to the state forms the basis of the exception (European Commission, 2007, pp. 234, 240).
In Rottmann, the Court stated that the ‘special relationship of solidarity and good faith between it and its nationals and also the reciprocity of rights and duties’ form ‘the bedrock of the bond of nationality’,Footnote 23 but this does not mean that allegiance has to be exclusive and that persons cannot have multiple loyalties. Although earlier international law instruments, such as the Convention on Certain Questions relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws of 1930 (The Hague Convention), were based on the premise that nationality is a legal expression of belonging and loyalty to a state or community and that such a bond cannot exist with more than one state or one unit, more recent international law regimes allow for dual or multiple nationality under certain conditions (Pilgram, Reference Pilgram2011). Due to increasing migration and gender equality, the number of people holding dual or multiple nationalities is increasing.Footnote 24 In the Netherlands, for instance, it tripled between 1995 and 2012: it is now 1.2 million.Footnote 25 One would expect that this fact might alter our views on nationality as an expression of loyalty to a single state. In addition, a growing number of states recognise dual nationality or multiple nationalities (Barry, Reference Barry2006, p. 42). Certainly, one cannot discount, here, the existence of countervailing tendencies of relinking nationality with ethnicity or single loyalty; the discussion in the Netherlands concerning the governmental proposal to prohibit dual nationality is a case in point.Footnote 26
EU citizenship is based on the idea that loyalty can also be directed to a community of states. As Advocate General Cruz Villálon has noted in his Opinion on the recent ‘notary cases’, ‘a premise whereby a national of a Member State has no way of expressing a legitimate commitment of loyalty to another Member State other than by first adopting its nationality’ would seriously call into question not only the free movement and political rights related to Union citizenship, but the establishment of the very institution as well. And he continued: ‘However the concept of loyalty as an expression of commitment to and solidarity with the political community cannot be regarded in itself as a distinctive, exclusive and preclusive characteristic of the Member States, such that it inevitably requires the bond of nationality.’Footnote 27
In a 2011 study on the potential of mobility for European identity building, reference is made to widespread evidence of the value of transnational mobility in developing civic participation and European identity (ECORYS, 2011). With growing mobility, especially among young people, the idea that loyalty to a political community other than, or in addition to, the state of nationality is possible. One of the rationales underpinning the European Commission's decision to make 2013 the ‘European Year of Citizens’ was to strengthen cohesion and mutual understanding between EU citizens (European Commission, 2013, p. 3). It is the case that these documents do not entail the view that a stronger European identity would weaken the significance of the national identity. However, if underpinning EU citizenship is the ‘existence of a community of States and individuals who share a set of values, a high degree of mutual trust and a commitment to solidarity’,Footnote 28 then one cannot maintain the view that the link between the individual and the state of her/his nationality is either an expression of exclusive allegiance or the exclusive expression of allegiance.
The Olympic Charter shows that a more flexible framework can be found to accommodate membership following an enmeshment into a localised web of socio-economic interactions without questioning loyalty or allegiance. If we take that as an example and adapt our conceptions of nationality, loyalty and identity accordingly, it might be possible to design a legal framework that recognises the reality that people through migration and mobility enjoy multiple identifications and membership in different co-existing circles of belonging (Kostakopoulou, Reference Kostakopoulou1996).Footnote 29 To think about nationality, identity and loyalty as separate and autonomous concepts would open up a number of avenues for institutional reform. It is to the exploration of this possibility through the lens of the Olympic Games that the discussion now turns.
III States' Olympics and the politics of citizenship
Time and space have been intimately related with citizenship as they are interlaced with notions of identity, memory, belonging, territorialisation of the ties connecting people and allegiance. As we argued in the preceding section, nationalist ideology has appropriated both space and time in a politically effective way by making lands as the birthplace of unique nations incorporating past, present and future generations thereby transcending the finitude of mortal time. Accordingly, when ‘love of country’, allegedly expressed by autochthonous individuals, is replaced by the ‘choice of country’ by allochthones having multifarious motivations, adherents of nationalism often raise concerns about the devaluation of citizenship. Citizenship, it is argued, reflects membership of a nation, and, as such, can neither be granted to those who lack such an attachment nor can it be exchanged for other tangible benefits as if it were a mere commodity. Accordingly, athletes, who despite having tenuous links with countries appear willing to represent them in Olympic Games (one may recall the debates in the US about Hammon's and Kaman's decisions to compete for Russia and Germany, respectively, at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games), are often depicted as not deserving the national vest of the new country, on the one hand, and as traitors in their home country, on the other.
The alleged devaluation of national citizenship does not only occur when ‘talented strangers’, such as Hammon and Kaman, become fairly quickly ‘valued members’ of a new body politic. It is also due to the fact that in the search for talent, countries decide to ‘sell’ national citizenship, thereby demoting it to market citizenship. Although such arguments at first sight appear to be convincing, it may be worth pausing here to consider a few important facts. First, it is difficult to identify the differentia specifica between favourable membership rules for potential Olympic athletes, on the one hand, and similarly favourable rules for attracting investment, and very highly skilled professionals and scientists, on the other.Footnote 30 Sporting activities do not belong to the realm of exceptionalism. In addition, expedited citizenship appears to be a problem only if a country adheres to strict, complex and long naturalisation requirements often involving a five- to ten-year residency requirement and civic integration and language tests. By contrast, if a country follows a de-ethnicised model of citizenship involving a two-year residence requirementFootnote 31 and a straightforward application for naturalisation, then an expedited route for talented athletes does not appear to be an anomalous process. In other words, elasticity is only a problem if one accords primacy to fixity and the traditionalism of ethnicised or culturalised citizenship. Finally, one can easily discern the imprint of nationalist ideology in the arguments mentioned above since past attachment to a polity takes automatic priority over present enmeshment in society and one's determination to make valuable contributions to it.
True, naturalisation has been conceived of as a nationalising practice since lawfully admitted newcomers of any nationality can become ‘true’ and ‘deserving’ citizens when they have already displayed their commitment to a nation's public values and learned the language, history and the civics (Kostakopoulou, Reference Kostakopoulou2006), but it would be difficult to criticise the grant of expedited citizenship to those expected to make very valuable contributions to the country through their work and talents simply because they cannot display the longevity of residence required by naturalisation laws. In other words, expediting citizenship for potential Olympic contestants does not erode citizenship as membership (Shachar, Reference Shachar2011); it simply substitutes past membership for present and future membership or adds another layer of membership.Footnote 32 It shifts the arrow of time from the past to present membership and future contribution to the polity. After all, there always exists a double layer in each reality. By following a forward looking approach, it shows that ‘what one brings to the polity’ and ‘what one contributes to it’ are as important considerations as the cultural and symbolic indicia of citizenship.
While it may be tempting to view the entanglement of citizenship with the Olympic Games as a recent manifestation of the spill-over effect of increasing human mobility and highly commercialised Olympics which, in turn, augment the desire of Western countries to recruit the most talented athletes thereby enhancing the prospects of more gold medals at the Games, in reality the politics of citizenship have always been part of the Olympics. The defection (or abduction, according to the former Soviet discourse) of Eastern bloc athletes during the Games was frequently aired and discussed in the press in the 1960s and 1970s and the threats of the Soviet Union to withdraw from the Games on occasions resulted in the ‘return’ of athletes back to it. One recalls the defections of the Hungarian athletes, Agnes Keleti in the summer Olympics of 1956 and Andras Toro's defection in Tokyo during the 1968 Olympics. World Championships also provided fora for defection with Bulgarian athlete Naim Suleymanoglou defecting during the World Cup in Melbourne in 1986 and travelling to Turkey, and Lithuanian Vladas Cesinas defecting to West Germany as soon as he arrived at Frankfurt airport. In the Soviet Union and in Eastern European countries, such actions were both condemnable and punishable since athletes did not pay the ‘debt’ they owed to socialist states for being assisted, educated and taken care of since their birth. From this standpoint, emigration restrictions were simply an education tax which ensured that states that had invested in individuals saw a good return for their investment.
Besides the emigration restrictions in former Soviet and Socialist Republics and defections during Olympic Games, the exclusion of apartheid South Africa and RhodesiaFootnote 33 from the Games in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980sFootnote 34 was a reminder of the global condemnation of institutionalised racialist definitions of sociopolitical and sport memberships. More specifically, South Africa was banned from the 1964 Games in Tokyo over its refusal to condemn racial discrimination and the prohibition of competitions between white and black athletes. And in the 21st Olympic Games in Montreal, twenty-five African countries withdrew in protest over New Zealand's continuing links with South Africa. Kenya's foreign minister James Osogo justified the withdrawal by stating: ‘The government and the people of Kenya hold the view that principles are more precious than medals.’ He maintained the view that the decision by the IOC not to ban New Zealand was giving ‘respectability to the South African racist regime and encouraging it to continue to defy world opinion’.Footnote 35
Highlighting the continuing racial discrimination and poverty in the US, on 17 October 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, both American black athletes who had won gold and bronze medals at the Mexico Olympics, protested by raising their black-gloved hands during the award ceremony. Tommie Smith later said during an interview: ‘It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty N… .’Footnote 36
But in the pre-World War II era, too, the politics of citizenship did leave an indelible mark on the Olympic Games. The policy of racial exclusion that underpinned Nazi ideology had resulted in the exclusion of world-class Jewish athletes from sports clubs and athletic competitions. And even though members of the IOC had protested against the racial exclusiveness of the Nazi regime in 1933 and a boycott movement demanding the organisation of the Olympic Games outside Germany was gaining momentum, Hitler managed to convince the American IOC members that Germany would include Jewish athletes (Helen Meyer, Gretel Bergmann and Rudi Ball) in the German Olympic team for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Strenk has commented on the German hospitality offered by the Nazi regime to American representatives in an attempt to allay protests in 1933–1934 (Strenk, Reference Strenk1978). Yet neither the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which redefined German citizenship in racial terms by excluding allegedly biologically inferior citizens of Jewish or mixed blood nor principled objections against the opportunistic alignment of Nazi ideology with the Olympic spirit of ‘creating international respect and goodwill and thus helping to construct a better and a more peaceful world’ (de Coubertin, Reference De coubertin1976), nor civic society's protests in many European countries and elsewhere managed to succeed in averting the organisation of the Games in Germany. Nazi propaganda capitalised enormously on the Games; new stamps, coins, a special film of the Olympics by Leni Reifenstahl and a new Olympic hymn, all contributed to the creation of spectacle which lent credibility to the Nazi regime and aided Hitler's militarist endeavours to obtain more ‘Lebensraum’ (living space) a few months later.
IV. Capitalising on the creative power of sport, exploring possibilities
Sport may have been used by governing elites as a means of advancing certain political programmes and morally deplorable agendas, but one cannot underestimate its immense creative power (Ortega y Gasset, Reference Ortega Y Gasset1941/2002, p. 32). It can bring diverse peoples together and can set in motion processes of change while simultaneously being subject to change owing to new sets of circumstances and globalising impulses. The last two decades have provided ample evidence for the above. The internationalisation of sporting competitions, the rise of global media and the sports media industry, the proliferation of sporting competitions, the involvement of big corporations and large multinational firms and their decisive contribution to the commodification of sport, all have been well documented. Theorists and sport sociologists may have been divided over the labelling of this trend, some preferring the term ‘Americanisation’ over that of ‘globalisation’ (Maguire, Reference Maguire1999; Kidd, Reference Kidd1991), but, generally speaking, there exists an agreement that the globalisation of sport and the emergence of ‘mega spectacle events’ (Roche, Reference Roche2002) can hardly leave both sporting and citizenship policies at national level unaffected.
Given the increasing mobility of highly skilled individuals and the race for talent in all fields, including sport, the widespread use of citizenship as a means of attracting talented individuals who will boost national glory and a country's stature with their athletic prowess is not surprising. But, as mentioned in the previous section, this trend raises a number of interesting questions concerning both the relevance of traditional conceptions of citizenship as membership of a more or less homogenous community characterised by shared traditions, common values and often imbued with a unique historical destiny, and the future of citizenship itself and the redesign of the Olympic Games.
For while sport has served nation-building programmes, the increasing globalisation of sport (Donnelly, Reference Donnelly1996; Roche, Reference Roche2002) and the award of citizenship to talented sportspersons set in motion an opposing trend, namely, processes of denationalisation. The latter have been obvious in the domains of cultures, be they national cultures or a global consumerist culture, and identities. But the increasing international migration of athletes and preferential citizenship acquisition might lead us to go a step further and contemplate ‘the unthinkable’, namely, either the denationalisation of the Olympic Games or the denationalisation of national citizenship policies and the formation of more civic identities on a worldwide basis.
One possibility accommodating the grant of expedited citizenship to talented individuals would be to follow the market citizenship route and to defend the case for the transformation of the nation-states' Olympics into people's Olympics. This would be a significant transformation, given the fact that the Olympic Games and other international ‘mega-events’ originated in the second part of the nineteenth century and are intimately related to the process of nation-building (Roche, Reference Roche2000, Reference Roche2003). The Games are premised on the requirement that nation-states select the teams and athletes representing the nation in order to compete with the other nations of the world and to gain recognition and glory (MacAloon, Reference Macaloon and MacAloon1984). Defying this historical pedigree and the symbolic function of selecting a national team representing the nation, domicile in a state–and not nationality–could be the main determinant of Olympic participation. One could thus contemplate a revised Rule 41 of the Olympic Charter stating: ‘Any competitor in the Olympic Games must be domiciled in the country of the National Olympic Committee which is entering such a competitor.’
Such a possibility has the advantage of accommodating athletes' mobility and augmenting competition among states for attracting the best athletes. On this reasoning, individuals' unique athletic abilities would be celebrated as opposed to their states' quest for national glory–a quest that bears the mark of contingency and luck and which underpins the practice of expedited citizenship acquisition. But strengthening the individual dimension, as opposed to the group dimension, could also be critiqued on four main grounds. First, it could be observed that it underestimates countries' investment in athletes and their often considerable contribution to nurturing their talents. In this respect, as taxpayers' money has been channelled to the promotion of sporting talent, taxpayers would expect that the bounded social unit's contribution becomes acknowledged publicly in the form of a medal celebrating the achievements of the country as a whole. After all, somebody always bears the cost of enabling the flourishing of each individual since no one is a monad. Second, it could be argued that it devalues citizenship insofar as it degrades it into an exchange relation and a commodity (Shachar, Reference Shachar2011, p. 2095). Premised on a belief in the distinctiveness of the citizenship bond and a communitarian reading of citizenship, this criticism brings forward an affirmation of national particularities and the presupposition of more or less neat distinctions between deserving citizens and undeserving strangers. However, the globalisation of sport, including its commodification, has called into question ‘thick’ national identity markers and shed light onto the artificiality as well as the complexity of community belonging.Footnote 37 In addition, it has highlighted the common issues and problems, thereby leading to the formation of transnational networks championing gender parity, the exploitation of poorer labourers in the third world, racism and discrimination, ecological concerns and so on, and broad coalitions engaging in strategies of resistance. Third, it could be argued that political life needs stories of glory, ‘heroic victories’ in sporting competitions and narrative constructions of unique national or country characters (see Darnell and Sparks, Reference Darnell and Sparks2005). One should not underestimate the importance of such narratives in bringing people together and socialising them in practices of common citizenship. The last criticism against competitive individualism would be that it would make the world championships and the Olympics indistinguishable. This last is indeed a rather serious criticism against the denationalisation of the Olympic Games.
If the strengthening of the individual dimension of the Olympic Games is seen to provide a less than adequate solution to ‘country hopping’ or ‘citizenship shopping’, then the opposite pole could be explored, that is, the strengthening of the group dimension. This could be achieved by the tightening of the naturalisation requirements thereby requiring athletes' long-term residence of no less than ten years and/or the successful attainment of civic integration requirements.Footnote 38 As naturalisation functions more often than not as a form of acculturation into the host society's values, language, norms and ways of life, athletes' naturalisation paths would result in their assimilation or integration into the host nation, thereby making them nationals or like-nationals. No reductions in the waiting period required following naturalisation before representing one's new country in sporting competition would be allowed.Footnote 39 Accordingly, they would clearly represent the nation they choose to join and would be exposed to the same benefits and burdens of membership as autochthonous citizens. The application of a more communitarian approach to country membership would thus enhance peoples' beliefs in the Olympic spirit of state competition on the global level and their expression of feelings of pride in the achievements of athletes as representatives of bounded units. In this respect, it would be congruent with the traditional association of sporting success and its traditional correlation with the enhancement of national identity.
While at first sight one may conclude that strengthening the boundaries of nation-state membership ameliorates the effects of forum shopping, it is, nevertheless, the case that it brings forward the spectre of hierarchical collectivism. It also appears to discriminate against the members of the sporting elite at a time when entrepreneurial and professional elites are given significant incentives in order to be mobile. In this respect, to subject athletes to forms of regulation reminiscent of state ownership or the pre-globalisation phase appears to be a rather retrogressive step. After all, even if we conceded that naturalisation requirements could be tightened to the degree mentioned above, the generalised acceptance of dual citizenship would give individuals the option of choosing which country they wish to compete for.
If neither a market-based logic nor a communitarian approach can furnish convincing arguments for a better regulation of athletes' Olympic participation, what is, then, the alternative? We suggest that a more participatory approach might be a better candidate. We shall call this a ‘participatory growth approach’. Its distinct advantage is that it does not have to be premised on belief systems in favour of strengthening either the statist or individual dimensions of the Olympic Games. Instead, it could be grounded on a flexible naturalisation process that recognises that an individual's conscious choice of a new place of residence coupled with his/her participation in its socio-economic life suffice for his/her eligibility to wear the national vest. The Olympic Charter (Rule 41, by-law 2) makes eligibility to participate as a new country's athlete conditional upon a prior three-year citizenship qualification.Footnote 40 Arguably, this three-year requirement entailed by international sporting frameworks could be seen as a reasonable and fair condition for participation in all sporting events and could even be extended to all socio-economic activities and to all individuals irrespective of their sporting talent. This is because it coincides with more open, flexible and inclusive citizenship models that prioritise ‘now’, that is, one's participation in, and enmeshment within, a system, over ‘then’, that is, ethnic origin or nationality.
Under the participatory growth model, the market does not feature as the main regulator of socio-economic and cultural life. Nor are state-imposed regulations restricting human mobility and individuals' full membership in society and polity the best way to advance social relations and to promote opportunities for individuals leading fulfilled personal lives. Instead, the personal choices of athletes to make a country the hub of their personal and professional lives should be respected and affirmed by granting them an unqualified right to represent the country of their residence in the Olympic Games. On this reasoning, instrumentalism, associated with market citizenship, on the one hand, and state regulation, associated with communitarianism, on the other, would be subsumed by a policy option that puts emphasis on individuals' freedom to make decisions about the direction of their lives and to engage in meaningful actions.Footnote 41
Critics might object here that a foreseen consequence of the above-mentioned reform would be the relegation of nationalism from the centre of political life into the peripheral zone of banal manifestation, thereby triggering processes of transformational change in public culture and personal attitudes. We fully concur with this view and would not regard such a relegation as regrettable. After all, society and sport have always been mutually dependent; Rowe has highlighted the importance of cultural symbols and the intricate entanglement of the ‘sport/media complex’ with the culture within which it is situated (Rowe, Reference Rowe1999; see also Rowe, McKay and Miller, Reference Rowe, Mckay, Miller and Wenner1998; Roche, Reference Roche1999). Public life would benefit from the absence of populist narratives about quintessentially national characters, traitors and token patriots and the embracing of a culture of openness and egalitarianism which would depict communities as free, fair and inclusive associations of citizens and not as mythologised and idealised bodies striving for excellence or the fulfilment of their historical destiny. Such narratives appear in the media during the Olympic Games as journalists are keen to construct not only micro-stories, that is, stories about athletes as sportspersons, but also macro-stories, that is, to weave narratives about the unique national soul encapsulated by their achievements. For instance, Darnell and Sparks have shown how the media's portrayal of Simon Whitfield, who won the first ever gold medal in the Olympic men's triathlon and the first Canadian medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, was tacitly influenced by dominant nationalist ideologies depicting Canadians as white and middle class with Anglo-centric sensibilities (Darnell and Sparks, Reference Darnell and Sparks2005, p. 373). Given the interdependence of sport, nationalism and culture – an interdependence that has been highlighted by sport sociologists since the 1970s (see Ball, Reference Ball1972; Grimes, Kelly and Rubin, Reference Grimes, Kelly and Rubin1974) – a change in naturalisation laws along the lines suggested above could induce changes in the narrative representation of sporting performance and achievements by the media, thereby contributing to the formation of a public culture that values inclusiveness and the participation of all its members irrespective of their place of origin or birth citizenship.
From a political point of view, the combination of flexibility and residence-based criteria in the domain of citizenship acquisition would discourage both ‘free-riding’ by those seeking to maximise personal gain and advantages without displaying a long-term commitment to sharing the costs of the commonwealth, on the one hand, and ‘variable-track’ approaches to the regulation of citizenship, which superimpose preferential entry for talented athletes envisaged to win medals in the Olympic GamesFootnote 42 over the restrictive policy towards ordinary individuals, on the other. And given that Olympianism is anchored in the ideal of the ‘building of a peaceful and better world’ (Samaranch, Reference Samaranch1995) and the close relation between sport and society, a flexible citizenship institutional design inspired by Olympic participation would trigger significant changes in politics and culture both within and beyond the nation-state. As Hall observed in 1981, ‘cultural change is a polite euphemism for the process by which some cultural forms and practices are driven out of the centre of popular life … so that something else can take their place’ (Hall, Reference Hall and Samuel1981, p. 228). More importantly, it would do so without inhibiting the expression of subjective emotions over success in sporting events as well as requiring, or even pronouncing triumphantly, the end of nationality or the dissolution of nation-states.Footnote 43 By simply undermining dominant nationalist narratives propagated by political elites and the media and prioritising social co-operation over the consensually validated preferential inclusion of those deemed to be like nationals, the global event of the Olympics would project true internationalismFootnote 44 and help redefine citizenship as a network good – and not an exclusive, and substantively elusive, quasi-oligarchic good (Kostakopoulou, Reference Kostakopoulou2008). In other words, the suggested alternative would reinvent citizenship in the twenty-first century and foster the formation of a worldwide civic identity which better reflects rapidly, and randomly, changing sociopolitical environments.
V Conclusion
In the foregoing discussion we recounted two paths concerning the transnationalisation of sport and the Olympic Games; namely, the ‘old’ world of nations competing via ‘their’ athletes, as momentary representatives of the nation, for glory, medals, dominance and prestige, and the ordinary reality of increasingly mobile sportspersons engaging in the pursuit of athletic excellence and creative self-expression and engendering new realities free from the compulsion exerted by nationality and notions of cultural belonging. It is the intersection of the two paths, the simultaneous multilayeredness of the present reality surrounding our conceptions of citizenship, belonging and participation in the Olympic Games that creates opportunities for change. As mentioned above, sport has been tangled with citizenship narratives and political programmes. It can be used to create a wider sense of community by establishing a ‘European dimension’ and a shared sense of belonging among citizens of the European Union. On the other hand, sport has equally been used in nationhood narratives and exclusionary citizenship politics, as the discussion in Part III above has shown. Nationhood narratives encompass both the depiction of those who decide to represent countries with which they have tenuous links as disloyal and ungrateful to the states that have invested in them and the luring of talented athletes by countries seeking to win more gold medals for the glory of the nation.
The increasing mobility of athletes forces us to reconsider the presumed connection between allegiance, identity and nationality. We have argued that allegiance between the individual and the state of nationality does not need to be exclusive. Nor does it have to be everlasting. Present contribution to, and enmeshment in, a society could take priority over (but not erase) past attachment to a polity, without leading to a devaluation of the institution of citizenship or the loss of narratives for establishing a sense of shared belonging. We proposed the participatory growth approach as a model that recognises an individual's conscious choice of a new place of residence, and participation in its socio-economic life and athletic arena and examined how this could be implemented empirically, thereby triggering changes in the Olympic Charter and politics in general. This model, based on flexibility and residence-based criteria for the acquisition of citizenship, would enable us to embrace communities as free, fair and inclusive associations of citizens and to appreciate fully individuals' sporting excellence without placing the latter at the service of narratives that perpetuate the illusionary worshiping of either the state or (national) culture or both.
