Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

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Making sport work: professionalisation and payment in the Swedish sport sector
Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, GIH, Department of Movement, Culture and Society. (REMO)ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1230-3415
2025 (English)In: EASS 21st European Conference for the Sociology of Sport: “Sport and the World in Crisis: Challenges and Solutions” / [ed] Dr hab. Michał Lenartowicz, 2025Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Many sectors in current Western societies depend on both paid and unpaid labour, one being the sports sector, where both athlete millionaires and voluntary labour co-exist. Although unpaid labour may be determined as what makes the sports sector work, this sector is extensively expanding in paid labour, both professionalising and commercialising the field. Although the form of organised sport in Scandinavia differs from other countries in that it is primarily built on voluntary sports, mainly with a monopoly on competitive sports and substantial involvement from the governments, the two interlinked processes of professionalisation and commercialisation are increasingly present in this sector, even in a Scandinavian country like Sweden. This study aimed to explore how occupations and salaries in the Swedish sports sector are impacted by background factors such as educational level, gender and private/public sector. Existing data from official sources was used. Contributing to international research in the sociology of profession and sport, this project sheds light on what types of work render economic value in parts of the Swedish sports sector, simultaneously highlighting professional and educational value. The study shows that some types of labour count as work more than others; however, the existing data is insufficient. Owing to the sector's complexity and various ways of measuring labour, an overview of the many forms of employment and remuneration in this sector is challenging to form.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025.
Keywords [en]
professionalisation, voluntarism, income, employment, gender
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Research subject
Social Sciences/Humanities
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:gih:diva-8763OAI: oai:DiVA.org:gih-8763DiVA, id: diva2:1985285
Conference
EASS 21st European Conference for the Sociology of Sport “Sport and the World in Crisis: Challenges and Solutions”, Warsaw, June 25-27 2025
Available from: 2025-07-23 Created: 2025-07-23 Last updated: 2025-09-16Bibliographically approved

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Bäckström, Åsa

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