Living between worlds:
Diasporic
Senses in Youth Football Labor Migrationu
International sport is big business. All
European states are now net immigration countries attributed to policy changes. Europeans are anxious about the
‘ghettoization’ of ethnic minorities in deprived inner cities, and
also the corresponding problems of
inter-ethnic tensions and violence,
and
more generally, the perceived fragmentation of
social solidarity and collective identities, as a result of increased cultural diversity (Boswell,
2005).
Among the numerous aspects of
DECOLONIZATION (mostly political and economic) studied during the half-century
(Kirk-Greene, 2001), some highlights in the literature have been related to key
features of economic globalization (Poli,
2010) or processes of acculturation (Weedon
(2012).
South
America and Africa...
Global
market
Modern game
In many team sports there is now a
global market for the buying and selling of players. Footballers (male and
female), and players of rugby, baseball, ice-hockey and basketball are
regularly traded for large sums of money. Elite migrants such as these often
command high salaries. National immigration and employment legislation is
designed in part to facilitate transfers and to enable top players to be
mobile.
The migration of professional
footballers is fundamental to the modern game, with the best athletes from the
poorerperipheral leagues flowing to world
football’s rich core in England, Italy, Germany, Spain and France.
The issue of migration in European
sport is set against the background of a process
of globalisation from which the sport sector is not
exempt. Globalisation and the convergence
of sporting nations in terms both of travel times (sea, rail and air) and of
our perceptions have thrown up a whole range of new issues concerning migration
flows in sport.
In European professional football,
over seven in every one hundred players migrating to Europe for the first time
are less than 18 years!! while over 33 are less than 21. There are currently
over 400 professional players who migrated to an European country as minors.
Transfers of young and very young
(under 15) players are therefore a reality in the sport, as reflected in the
example of one of the best players at present, Lionel
Messi,
who was only 10 when he arrived at FC Barcelona. Alongside that extraordinary
success story, there are no statistics to show the failure rate among under-16s
or, still less, the percentage of unhappy experiences, including violations of
children’s rights, human rights and sports ethics.
In football, migration of players
accelerated with the 1995 Bosman
ruling of the European Court of Justice, which removed restrictions on the
number of players originating from European countries that could be recruited
by European clubs,
This was later extended to other
origin countries (and sports) by the Malaja, Kolpak and Simutenkov cases and the 2000 Cotonou
agreement. In football today, foreign players
account for over a third of
the total in the 36 European championships, where it can be said that the more
successful a championship is the more likely it is to attract players who are
not nationals of the country they currently play in.
According to the 2010 Demographic Study of Footballers in
Europe,
players who left the country they grew up in because of their football careers
were aged 22.2 years on average when they did so; thereby demonstrating that
international recruitment by clubs in the most successful leagues is geared
more towards young players.
Source: Demographic Study of
Footballers in Europe, PFPO, 2010
Moreover, it should be noted that,
of the ten countries which export the youngest players to Europe, six are in
Africa, two are in Europe themselves and two are in other continents.
Africa
is therefore very important in football, alongside with Brazil and Argentina.
By way of example, it is not always
possible to predict where these young African footballers will end up… as, for
example, the three leading countries of
origin of foreign players in the Finnish first division in 2010 were Zambia,
Brazil and Nigeria in that order.
Interestingly, the data suggests
that ‘Almost 80% of Ghanaians who migrated in 2010 are midfielders or forwards.
Generally speaking, a greater part of international flows concern players in
these positions (63.5%)
It is well known that international
migration may affect human
capital in origin countries in both positive
and negative ways. Human
traficking in football takes place when one or more of the following abuses are
ascertained:
-Inconclusive
trials abroad and withdrawal
-Joining
of a club or training centre abroad and unilateral breaking of contract
-Keeping
player in an illegal situation
-Exclusive
control of a football player’s professional mobility (i.e. Unfair contracts
binding a player to his agent)
-Work
exploitation (i.e. non.-respect of salary agreements)
We
have another big term...
Neo
colonialism
It
can be defined as the exploitation of poor countries by rich ones and
transnational companies. Football
economy is characterised by a strong level of financial discrepancies among
countries and leagues. This
polarisation favours unequal power relationships and different forms of
exploitation:
1.Exploitation of African footballers
vulnerability by clubs and intermediaries
2.Exploitation of African clubs by
other clubs via the recruitment of players without compensation
3.Exploitation of African elites of
players and national teams for economic and political reasons
4.Exploitation of African elites of
funds provided among others by football governing bodies to the detriment of
the local development of football
This data is from 2012 and was
retrieved from two different websites
containing information about the clubs and young athletes in Portugal. Here we have the number of young athletes that are playing in clubs
in the two main leagues in Portugal. We can also see the amount of national vs
foreign players playing in those clubs from the age of 13.Note
that the three major football clubs in Portugal account for more than 43% of
the foreign players playing here.
Methods
Question: How do they perceive
themselves and others in this process of acculturation?
This research examines footballs’ role to various ex-colonial
communities in diverse locations
Sociocultural relationship
100 youth participants – 14-18
years of age
1st Phase Portugal,
2nd Phase Netherlands/Belgium
3rd Phase France
The project examines these
questions using quantitative and qualitative methods of social research. This analysis is based on a
multi-methods approach that includes:
- semi-structured interview,
- retrospective interview,
- questionnaires (measuring
aspirations, intrinsic motivation and self-determination), and,
- participant observational data
(school achievement, local residence, peer relationships).
Final Remarks
Europe’s
sports and institutional sector is therefore faced with a set of
issues where it is necessary, first of all, to determine both the
responsibilities of all concerned and the scale of the problem so that a range
of measures can be implemented to protect clubs, young sportspeople and their
families.
The sports movement and governments
can agree on taking the most effective measures possible against the abuses
which come with migration flows in different sports. The interdisciplinary nature of the issue,
as migration in sport concerns not only the sporting
authorities
but also those responsible for migration
and child protection.
The measures to be considered
therefore involve the sports
movement and sports
policies, as well as development aid policies,
migration policies and
childhood protection.
Márcio Domingues
