Critical re-signification of Olympic values by youth facilitators: friendship, respect and peace with children and adolescents in refugee situations

Le résumé fourni par la source

Olympic values such as friendship, respect, and excellence are frequently promoted as universal ethical principles within Olympic education. Yet this framing often overlooks how values take shape through lived experience, particularly in contexts marked by displacement and precarity. This article examines how fourteen university facilitators re-signified these values during a seven-day sport-based intervention with children and adolescents in a refugee shelter in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach and drawing on open-ended reflective questionnaires and concluding focus groups, the study explores how facilitators interpreted and enacted the values through their daily interactions in the shelter. Findings show that friendship, respect, and peace were not applied as predefined moral categories but emerged through relational encounters characterised by attentiveness, emotional negotiation, and shared vulnerability. Friendship was understood as mutual reliance in uncertain conditions; respect developed through dialogic engagement and the careful navigation of conflict; and peace appeared as a fragile, everyday practice grounded in presence and care. These situated interpretations challenge universalist approaches within Olympic education and highlight the importance of relational, context-responsive pedagogies. By centring facilitators’ reflections, the study contributes to critical sport pedagogy by demonstrating how values gain meaning through affective, situated practice, and how young educators engage in processes of unlearning and ethical re-orientation when working in humanitarian settings.

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