Jose Richard Aviles
Transportation Analyst and Arts & Culture Strategy Lead

At my good friend’s World Cup watch party in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, I noticed Mexican jerseys everywhere. I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

Mexico and L.A., sure that part makes sense considering the relationship to the country and the city. On the television in front of us, Mexico was playing South Korea; a match like that is never just players kicking a ball back and forth. The moment the match was announced, I knew that, regardless of the outcome, it was going to be a party in Los Angeles. A gathering of humans. A block party of my neighbors, friends, and strangers. A family reunion where every face felt like a cousin I hadn’t seen in a while, all just caught up in the commotion, rallying behind a team. 

A ritual and reason for people to leave their homes and find one another in public. But as I was caught up in the moment of cheering for Mexico to win, I noticed something interesting. 

There were people that I perceived to be white Americans wearing Mexico jerseys – and that’s with the understanding that nationality and ethnicity are not the same and that white Mexicans exist, but that’s for another blog. There were fans whom I perceived not to be of Mexican origin, based on my assumptions of their race and language, wearing the colors as if they had been waiting for permission to join the party. On another night, watching another game, someone juxtaposed a Brazilian jersey with a Mexican hat. 

All over the city, whether at their local queer bar, sports bar, living room, or designated FIFA Fan Fests, people gathered under nations' flags that were not necessarily theirs by birth, but for the day it was there’s, your’s: Our’s.

And I kept wondering: What is happening here? What cultural significance can the World Cup teach us about belonging?

Why does someone choose a country other than their own when it comes to sports teams? Why does someone select to put on a jersey and enter a story they were not born into? Why do people, who regularly may have social conflict, for a few hours allow themselves to belong to something larger than identity, larger than geography, larger even than the nation-state?

Maybe that is what the World Cup does best. It does not simply show us who we are loyal to. It reveals that, underneath it all, people want to belong to something. 

Every four years, the world gathers around a game. But the World Cup has never been solely about soccer. It is about memory, migration, grief, joy, language, food, music, heartbreak, and the strange intimacy of cheering next to strangers. It’s about people finding ways to locate themselves in a world that so often tells them they are out of place.

For some, fandom is inherited. You root for the country your parents came from, or the flag that hung in your childhood home. You root for the team your tíos yelled about, the one your cousins cried over, the one that taught you the first language of collective disappointment.

But for others, fandom is chosen.

You follow a player. You love a style of play. You admire a team’s swagger, discipline, creativity, or refusal to give up. Like the way many people became fans of the underdog and first-time participant, Cape Verde, who many believed was very close to defeating the expected winner, Argentina, in their Round of 32 match. You wear the jersey because something about the way they move through the game feels like the way you want to move through the world.

That is what makes the World Cup such a fascinating lesson in belonging. It creates a kind of self-selected belonging. Not one assigned by race, birthplace, gender, citizenship, or geopolitics. Not one handed down by empire or border. People step in willingly, for ninety minutes, to choose one another.

That choice matters.

At the Othering & Belonging Institute, we often talk about belonging as more than inclusion. Belonging is not simply being allowed into a room. It has a meaningful say in shaping the room itself. It is being recognized in your full humanity. It is being able to participate without having to erase yourself. The World Cup gives us a spectacle of that possibility. Not a perfect version or utopia. But a glimpse.

It is a place where a Korean fan can wear a Mexico jersey because they love how Mexico plays. Mexican fans can celebrate South Korea because in 2018, South Korea beat Germany, helping Mexico advance. That gratitude became viral videos, free tacos, shared meals, and a beautiful soccer love story between two communities that already knew something about migration, family, pressure, and pride.

So in the future, when Mexico and South Korea meet again, especially in a place like Los Angeles, the match carries history. It carries humor and the memory of fans who once became family for a moment, as one team’s victory opened the door to another team’s survival. It becomes a metaphor for how cultures and nationalities already coincide and cohabitate in a city like Los Angeles.

That is sports at its best. It creates relationships where none were expected. It also teaches us something politics often forgets: how to compete without dehumanizing.

Sportsmanship may be one of the purest expressions of belonging. To enter a match is to consent to uncertainty. You might win. You might lose. But you accept both possibilities before the whistle even blows and agree to play by the rules. You agree that your opponent is not your enemy and that defeat does not erase anyone’s dignity.

When did we lose that in public life?

I’m particularly thinking about the modern American nationalism that feels rooted in othering. I am reminded about the 2008 presidential campaign, when, during a town hall hosted by the late Senator John McCain, a member of the audience made disparaging comments about then presidential candidate Barack Obama, and in an act of what we could consider political sportsmanship, McCain stopped the audience member and called Obama an honorable American citizen.

When did disagreement become humiliation? When did competition require cruelty? When did winning become permission to other people?

There is something deeply democratic about good sportsmanship. It asks us to hold tension. To care deeply without destroying one another, and to fight for an outcome while still recognizing the humanity of the person across from us.

But that does not mean the World Cup is an innocent and pure event. It is not. The tournament exists inside a world shaped by war, borders, displacement, surveillance, authoritarian politics, immigration raids, and staggering inequality. The same fans who celebrate together in the street may return home to policies that separate families, criminalize migrants, or decide whose presence is welcome and whose is disposable.

That contradiction matters.

We should not romanticize the spectacle and forget the conditions around it. The World Cup can foster belonging, but it can also expose the places where it is denied.

An Iranian team is not the same as the Iranian state. A Mexican fan is not reducible to immigration policy. An American crowd is not the same thing as the American empire. People are always more complicated than the governments that claim to represent them.

That may be one of the World Cup’s most powerful lessons.

So much of othering is fueled by the decisions of a few. Leaders draw borders, wage wars and build detention centers. Leaders decide who is dangerous, who is disposable, who is foreign, and who belongs.

But in the stands, bars, parks, and living rooms, people often make a different decision.

They share food, trade jerseys and chant in languages they barely know. They celebrate someone else’s joy, and grieve someone else’s loss. They find, even briefly, a way to live beyond the narrow identities handed to them.

Belonging is in the fans' hands, and the question is whether we can carry it beyond the game.

Because if people can show up with this much passion for a team, what would it take to bring that same energy to democracy? To organize and to protect our neighbors from raids? To build communities where people are not merely tolerated but valued?

What would it mean to alchemize fandom into civic life?

The World Cup shows us that people already know how to practice collective joy. That we know how to gather, wear symbols and to chant for one another. We know how to feel part of something larger than ourselves. And movements need that too.

Not the nationalism, the violence or the toxic competition that can still erupt around sports. But the devotion and creativity. The willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers and say: For this moment, your joy is my joy too.

That is belonging.

And yet belonging also needs boundaries. Not everyone has to belong with me. Not every space has to hold every person in the same way. Some relationships are harmful. Some communities require distance to remain whole. Boundaries are not the opposite of belonging. Sometimes they are what make belonging possible.

The goal is not forced togetherness. It is not pretending that harm does not exist. It is not asking people to stay where they are unsafe. The goal is a world where everyone has somewhere to belong without requiring someone else’s exclusion.

That is the deeper invitation.

In a few days, the World Cup will come to an end. The flags will come down. The jerseys will go back into closets. The final whistle will blow. Someone will win. Someone will lose. People will argue about referees, missed shots, penalties, and what could have been.

But for a few weeks, the world remembers something. We remember that belonging can be chosen. We remember that identity can be playful, expansive, and shared. We remember that people are capable of building bridges across language, nationality, race, and history when given a reason to gather.

Maybe the reason does not have to be soccer. Maybe the reason can be each other.

If a game can create this much voluntary solidarity across borders, then perhaps belonging is not as impossible as we are told. Maybe what stands in the way is not ordinary people, because othering has always depended on convincing us that we are more divided than we actually are.

Somewhere between the jerseys, the chants, the watch parties, and the strangers becoming family for ninety minutes, the World Cup is offering us a glimpse of a world we still have the power to build.

--

Editor's note: The ideas expressed in this essay are not necessarily those of the Othering & Belonging Institute or UC Berkeley, but belong to the author.