Sports have been said to be a powerful platform to help refugee youth overcome traumas from migration (Oliff, 2007) and to facilitate their adjustment in their country of settlement (Rich, Misener, & Debeau, 2015). Sport participation among refugee youth has also linked to greater agency (McDonald, Spaaij, & Dudik, 2018) and prosocial behavior (Nathan et al., 2013) among other benefits. Studies investigating sport-based programs for the social inclusion of refugees have used different methodologies like participatory action research and quasi-experimental mixed method designs in order to understand the effects that these programs had on their participants. However, very few of these studies investigated the refugee youth in-depth. To remedy this state of affairs a hermeneutical phenomenological research design was used in this study to directly assess participant experiences in exploring the role of a soccer-based program in the acculturation of refugee youth. The soccer-based program in the acculturation of refugee youth was a yearly program that involved two practices and one game per week along with mandatory tutoring sessions. Data was collected from in-depth interviews conducted with 8 former participants of a soccer-based program for refugees in a mid-Michigan city in the USA. The content of their interviews was transcribed and analyzed using initial coding and theory-based coding. The latter compared the participants' acculturation experiences in the society of settlement with Berry's (1997) framework for acculturation research. Results showed that participation in the program contributed to the refugees' English acquisition, academic performance, and social and personal development. Participants said they learned multiple functional skills like "respect" and "making right choices" from interacting with the program's experienced staff and coach. Finally, participation led to the participants' integration among other refugees but was also found to contribute to their marginalization among their American peers.
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