Africans have long graced football fields around the world. The success of icons such as Samuel Eto’o, Didier Drogba and Mohamed Salah has fuelled the migratory projects of countless male youth across the continent.
Using over a decade of ethnographic research, African football migration traces the historical, geographical and regulatory features of this migratory process. While a fortunate few do forge a successful career overseas, the book reveals how the vast majority experience involuntary immobility. Meanwhile others who are able to ‘go outside’ encounter truncated careers at the margins of the industry followed by precarious post-playing career lives.
In unpacking these issues, African football migration offers fresh perspectives on the transnational strategies deployed by youth and young men striving to improve their life chances in post-colonial Africa, and the role that mobility, imagined and enacted, plays in these struggles.
By:
Paul Darby,
James Esson,
Dr Christian Ungruhe
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 17mm
Weight: 581g
ISBN: 9781526120267
ISBN 10: 1526120267
Series: Globalizing Sport Studies
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 25 January 2022
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction 1 Theorising African football migration 2 The history, geography and regulation of African football migration 3 ‘Producing’ African labour for the global football industry 4 Speculation in and through football migration 5 ‘Becoming a somebody’ through football 6 Luck, sackings and involuntary immobility in football 7 Navigating liminality in foreign football industries 8 Hope and precarity in transnational football careers 9 Post-playing-career transitions and struggles Conclusion Index -- .
Paul Darby is a Reader in the Sociology of Sport at Ulster University James Esson is a Reader in Human Geography at Loughborough University Christian Ungruhe is a Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at Erasmus University Rotterdam -- .
Reviews for African Football Migration: Aspirations, Experiences and Trajectories
Shortlisted for the British Society of Sports History’s Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2023 Honourable Mention - North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Outstanding Book Award 2023 'This discussion of a key element of the global labour market in contemporary sport manages to both straddle complex disciplinary boundaries - sociology, geography, and anthropology - to present a well historicised, sharply insightful analysis of football migration, mainly from West Africa, in the last two decades.' - Judges statement 'Well-researched and meticulously written [...] Provides some much-needed oxygen to the study of African migration.' Jesper Bjarnesen, International Migration Review -- .
