Insecurities in European Football and Supporter Cultures

Against the backdrop of the recent and renewed political and policy interest in the safety and security in European football contexts, this book examines the ways in which the regulation of insecurities in European football has been advanced by European institutions and organizations, and contested by football supporters, from the 1980s to the present day. This book therefore produces an updated empirical but theoretically informed account of how insecurities in football have been responded to and countered on a European level through expressions of power and counter-power.

By drawing on material from interviews, and analyses of international legal texts, policy documents and historical football fanzines, Insecurities in European Football and Supporter Cultures uses European football as a window to understand wider processes of (in)security and the regulation of cultures, social groups and contested spaces. Utilizing perspectives from contemporary sociology and critical security studies, this book produces the argument that, as institutions’ risk-focused logics and precautionary principles have been embedded in the attempts to secure European football, it is simultaneously possible to observe a reflexive culture of contestation that has matured across four decades in European football.

is an important, fascinating and timely reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology of sport, football, security studies, surveillance, social theory and sport studies.