Informal sport and physical activity in Trinidad and Tobago: sweats as sites of local interaction—and modes of integration for Venezuelan immigrants

The subject of informal sport and physical activity has often been overlooked within sport scholarship, including research on sport-for-development. This is largely because participation, programmes and analysis usually focus on organised engagement in mainstream sports. However, in some contexts culturally significant social collectives have emerged, involving less formal forms of sporting and physical activities. This chapter examines an example in Trinidad and Tobago, where the sweat (meaning to sweat) is a label used by participants to describe forms of prearranged but unorganised activities. These localised collectives can serve as sites of community cohesion, interpersonal negotiation and societal reconciliation. The unique modes of communication in these spaces (referred to as ‘ole talk’) are integral to how participants interact. A significant number of displaced Venezuelans have relocated to Trinidad and Tobago, and the sweats can also provide important opportunities for members of immigrant communities to negotiate integration into Trinbagonian society. Applying Paolo Freire’s pedagogical notions of problem-posing dialogue, this ethnographic chapter examines this social phenomenon and the dialogue of its participants. It then examines the agency these sites can facilitate, in contrast to the more restrictive modes of participation common within structured sport. The work also explores the facilitation of local interaction and cross-cultural integration of Venezuelan immigrants in these spaces. This chapter adds to the growing scholarship on informal sport and physical activity, examined here as sites of social cohesion and applications of sport-for-development.