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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnography with a Black and Brown migrant football club in Budapest, this paper explores how a new moral economy creates hierarchies of desirability for non-white footballers, differentially integrating elites while deeming grassroots players undeserving.

Paper long abstract

Since 2010, Viktor Orbán’s governments have promoted an ethnically homogeneous nation, depicting racilaized minorities as threats while pragmatically embracing elite non-white athletes whose victories boost nationalist prestige. This creates a deep hierarchy of desirability within a 'new moral economy' that ties social value to productivity, justifying the neglect of those deemed unproductive, - like the Roma who are cast as 'dirty white' to purify the national body. This paper ethnographically traces how this logic extends to the football pitch. Focusing on a fourth-division club of non-white migrant players in Budapest, it reveals their consequent positioning as 'undeserving'. Excluded from the state's nationalist spectacle and facing racial abuse as 'space invaders' in a white-coded institution, their club is a direct byproduct of this differential integration. In response, the players reshape the club into a key site of subtle resistance - a constructed Black social space of care, mutual aid, and solidarity that sustains them against systemic abandonment. This grassroots community embodies the yearnings for an inclusive world from within the margins. Analysing this tension, the paper demonstrates how illiberal states like Hungary employ a double-edged logic of deservingness to manage racial capitalism: strategically integrating a celebrated few to legitimize the abandonment of the many, thereby consolidating an exclusionary national order.