Long-distance football fandom: emotional mobilities and fluid geographies of home

Sport and home are intimately connected. This connection has, however, remained little explored by geographers. Drawing on the stories of 32 football fans who live in New Zealand but support a team based in another country, football fandom is unpacked as key to constructing geographies of home and belonging across distance. Applying recent work in 'emotional mobilities' and drawing on the notion of 'affective economics', I argue the movement between these fan homes and the journeying to a significant sporting home highlights the transference of emotion across space. In particular three themes emerge, through collecting fans' stories using mixed and emerging methods such as 'go-alongs', photography and interviews. For fans, homes associated with football teams such as stadia can be seen as spiritual, with a pilgrimage undertaken to 'return' to this significant space. Alternative homes, however, can also be sought and begin to stretch fan homes away from physical locations. Finally, examining fans' relationships to 'imaginary' homes, anchored through the use of media and television, exposes the construction of 'virtual homes'. Thus, sport allows geographies of home to be performed and 'felt' in a variety of dispersed and 'stretched' space.