Sport and Migration

Sport and Migration
Author: Joseph Maguire
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2010-10-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1135999139

In this dazzling collection of papers, leading international sport studies scholars chart the patterns, policies and personal experiences of labour migration within and around sport, and in doing so cast important new light both on the forces shaping modern sport and on the role that sport plays in shaping the world economy and global society. Contains a broad range of case studies focussing on such diverse areas as European and African soccer, Japanese baseball and rugby union in New Zealand.

Sport, Migration, and Gender in the Neoliberal Age

Sport, Migration, and Gender in the Neoliberal Age
Author: Niko Besnier
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2020-10-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429751508

This ethnographic collection explores how neoliberalism has permeated the bodies, subjectivities, and gender of youth around the world as global sport industries have expanded their reach into marginal areas, luring young athletes with the dream of pursuing athletic careers in professional leagues of the Global North. Neoliberalism has reconfigured sport since the 1980s, as sport clubs and federations have become for-profit businesses, in conjunction with television and corporate sponsors. Neoliberal sport has had other important effects, which are rarely the object of attention: as the national economies of the Global South and local economies of marginal areas of the Global North have collapsed under pressure from global capital, many young people dream of pursuing a sport career as an escape from poverty. But this elusive future is often located elsewhere, initially in regional centres, though ultimately in the wealthy centres of the Global North that can support a sport infrastructure. The pursuit of this future has transformed kinship relations, gender relations, and the subjectivities of people. This collection of rich ethnographies from diverse regions of the world, from Ghana to Finland and from China to Fiji, pulls the reader into the lives of men and women in the global sport industries, including aspiring athletes, their families, and the agents, coaches, and academy directors shaping athletes’ dreams. It demonstrates that the ideals of neoliberalism spread in surprising ways, intermingling with categories like gender, religion, indigeneity, and kinship. Athletes’ migrations provide a novel angle on the global workings of neoliberalism. This book will be of key interest to scholars in Gender Studies, Anthropology, Sport Studies, and Migration Studies.

Women, Soccer and Transnational Migration

Women, Soccer and Transnational Migration
Author: Sine Agergaard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2014-08-21
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1135939381

Estimated participation figures of almost 30 million worldwide make soccer the most prominent team sport amongst girls and women. However, making a living as a female player is only deemed possible in approximately 20 out of around 150 FIFA-listed women’s soccer countries. This has led to a situation where highly skilled sports women have to migrate from their homelands to find employment with a professional team. Women, Soccer and Transnational Migration represents a substantial contribution to our knowledge on the development of women’s soccer, to research into sports labor migration and sport and globalization more broadly. The book consists of three parts. Firstly, it provides an overview and an analysis of migration in women's soccer from its earliest forms until now. It then presents several case studies, delivered by scholars from around the world, illustrating how female players are increasingly being drawn to the USA, Northern Europe and Scandinavia due to their ability to support professional leagues. Finally, all the themes and patterns of these case studies are drawn together to be able to compare and contrast migration in women's soccer to sport migration and globalization more broadly. This study not only makes recommendations for future researchers, but may also serve as an important source of information for those in charge of policy. As such, it is essential reading for students, lecturers, researchers and practitioners involved in sports migration and women's sport.

Rethinking Sports and Integration

Rethinking Sports and Integration
Author: Sine Agergaard
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-12-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780367894177

Rethinking Sports and Integration offers a critical cultural analysis of the idea that sport can promote the integration of migrants and their descendants. It examines the origins of this idea and the concept of integration, and analyzes the problems in focus, the methods applied and the results of sports-related integration programmes. The text also redefines sports-related integration with perspectives from migration studies that highlight the super-diversity within migrant groups, and explore the various ways in which transnational connections influence participation in sport within migrant communities. This book is important reading for students and researchers working in sport development, sport policy or migration studies, as well as a valuable resource for sports governing bodies, policymakers and project workers.

The Anthropology of Sport

The Anthropology of Sport
Author: Niko Besnier
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520289013

"Few activities bring together physicality, emotions, politics, money, and morality as dramatically as sport. In Brazil's stadiums or parks in China, on Cuba's baseball diamonds or rugby fields in Fiji, human beings test their physical limits, invest emotional energy, bet money, perform witchcraft, and ingest substances, making sport a microcosm of what life is about. The Anthropology of Sport explores not only what anthropological thinking tells us about sports, but also what sports tell us about the ways in which the sporting body is shaped by and shapes the social, cultural, political, and historical contexts in which we live. Core themes discussed in this book include the body, modernity, nationalism, the state, citizenship, transnationalism, globalization, and gender and sexuality"--Provided by publisher.

In Foreign Fields

In Foreign Fields
Author: Thomas F. Carter
Publisher: Pluto Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-08-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780745330143

In Foreign Fields examines the lives, decisions and challenges faced by transnational sport migrants -- those professionals working in the sports industry who cross borders as part of their professional lives. Despite a great deal of romance surrounding international celebrity athletes, the vast majority of transnational sport migrants -- players, journalists, coaches, administrators and medical personnel -- toil far away from the limelight. Based on twelve years of ethnographic research conducted on three continents, Thomas F. Carter traces their lives, routes and experiences, documenting their travels and travails. He argues that far from the ease of mobility that celebrity sports stars enjoy, the vast majority of transnational sports migrants make huge sacrifices and labor under political restrictions, often enforced by sport's governing bodies. This unique and clearly written study will make fascinating reading for anthropologists, sociologists and anyone interested in the lives of those who follow their sporting dreams.

Football and Migration

Football and Migration
Author: Richard Elliott
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1317810473

Football is an incredibly powerful case study of globalization and an extremely useful lens through which to study and understand contemporary processes of international migration. This is the first book to focus on the increasingly complex series of migratory processes that contour the contemporary game, drawing on multi-disciplinary approaches from sociology, history, geography and anthropology to explore migration in football in established, emerging and transitional contexts. The book examines shifting migration patterns over time and across space, and analyses the sociological dynamics that drive and influence those patterns. It presents in-depth case studies of migration in elite men’s football, exploring the role of established leagues in Europe and South America as well as important emerging leagues on football's frontier in North America and Asia. The final section of the book analyses the movement of groups who have rarely been the focus of migration research before, including female professional players, elite youth players, amateur players and players’ families, drawing on important new research in Ghana, England, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Few other sports have such a global reach and therefore few other sports are such an important location for cross-cultural research and insight across the social sciences. This book is engaging reading for any student or scholar with an interest in sport, sociology, human geography, migration, international labour flows, globalization, development or post-colonial studies.

Transnational Mobilities in Action Sport Cultures

Transnational Mobilities in Action Sport Cultures
Author: H. Thorpe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2014-05-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0230390749

This book contributes to recent debates in transnationalism, mobilities and migration studies by offering the first in-depth sociological examination of the global phenomenon of action sports and the transnational networks and connections being established within and across local contexts around the world.

The Global Sports Arena

The Global Sports Arena
Author: John Bale
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1135195862

Athletes are on the move. In some sports this involves labour, movement from one country to another within or between continents. In other sports, athletes assume an almost nomadic migratory lifestyle, constantly on the move from one sport festival to another. In addition, it appears that sport migration is gaining momentum and that it is closely interwoven with the broader process of global sport development taking place in the late twentieth century.