Paper short abstract:

The globalization of migration has led to the gradual opening of national borders. Since then, the phenomenon of flight of Cameroonian sportsmen has increased. Who are these athletes? What are the causes of their flight? Is defection the solution to their vulnerabilities?

Paper long abstract:

This communication proposes to analyze the migratory factors that push Cameroonian athletes to flee during international competitions. Indeed, throughout the 20th century, the international migration of African athletes was closely linked to major historical events. From the First World War and during the inter-war period, the clubs of colonial powers such as France enlisted players of African origin with the status of "assimilated", "natives", "immigrant workers " or "international stars". The globalization of migration since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 has led to the gradual lifting of national borders. Sports migration has since experienced a new dynamic. The breach was opened for the flight of athletes, including Cameroonian athletes. We leave the study of the "brain drain" to that of the "muscle drain" or "Muscle drain", including migration for sports work, trajectories or sports migration networks.

The interviews conducted with coaches, federal officials and some Cameroonian athletes who have defected in international competition have made it possible to constitute a prosopography of the latter. It appears that more than sixty athletes fled during international competitions. The lack of infrastructure, poverty, frustrations, migratory networks, the desire for a better life are the main causes of this desertion. The flight of Cameroonian athletes appears to reveal the national vulnerabilities that these athletes face, to the point of organizing migration for or through sport.

Paper short abstract:

On the back of neoliberal reform across Africa since the 1980s, young females experience a transformation of norms of social becoming. We explore how aspirations of transnational football migration reflect enlarged demands, responsibilities and possibilities that characterize this transformation.

Paper long abstract:

The growth of girls’ and women’s football in Africa and an increase in the number of professional leagues, mainly in Europe and North America, has given rise to increasing levels of international migration of African female players over the last two decades. This trend reflects the longer standing practice of independent transnational migration among African women that has been visible since the late 1980s and potentially, of enlarged possibilities and responsibilities for African females on the back of neoliberal reform across the continent. Our paper explores how these sporting, cultural and economic transformations influence the aspirations of young female footballers in West Africa. In particular, it examines the extent to which realising transnational mobility through a professional football career is viewed by young females as a strategy to improve ones’ own and family members’ life chances. We draw on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, Sweden and Denmark between 2015 and 2022 that sought to capture how young West African, mainly Ghanaian, females imagine, encounter and negotiate the possibilities of a professional football career overseas. Our findings illustrate how the above-mentioned transformations have coalesced to produce an understanding of transnational football mobility among young females in West Africa as a route, albeit a highly speculative one, to negotiate and potentially fulfill reciprocal obligations and entrustments to family. Through doing so, we begin to theorize how women’s football becomes one way to navigate the transition from the life phase of youth into respectable social adulthood.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores dreams of, and aspirations for, migration among Ghanaian footballers. It unpacks the stuff that the dreams are made of, and asks who produces these dreams, who capitalizes on them, and: will the dreams come true?

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores aspirations for football migration and the ability to do so through the notion of dreams. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ghana and Sweden between 2017-2019, it analyzes the dream of football migration by unpacking the stuff that the dream is made of. It is shown to consist of a multilayered set of dreams including aspirations for migration, footballing success and economic prosperity. These dreams are furthermore shared by the individual footballers, their families and the people that work in the football industry. They are in many ways global dreams that become pervasive, almost irresistible in their character. In that sense, they form part of what can be called an economy of dreams, which in turn is shaped by larger historical and contemporary processes of colonialism, capitalism and neoliberalism. The paper also asks: who produces these dreams, who capitalizes on them, and: will the dreams come true?

Paper short abstract:

How do young male football players in Sierra Leone maintain their dream of embarking on a journey to the professional game overseas? This paper explores expectations and the informal livelihood strategies that footballers employ in pursuing transnational football mobility.

Paper long abstract:

Football migration from Africa to Europe is a long-established phenomenon and today numerous West African nations are a well-known source of talent for the global football industry. The fact that Sierra Leone is not particularly renowned as a talent hotbed, however, does little to deter young players from pursuing their dream of ‘making it’ as a professional footballer abroad. How do they maintain the dream in the grimness of the precarious environment? This paper explores expectations and the informal livelihood strategies that young men in Sierra Leone employ in their pursuit of transnational football mobility.

The research draws on data from a year-long, multisided-ethnographic study involving 50 interviews with players and football experts in Sierra Leone and Scandinavian countries. The concept of ‘hustle’ / ‘dreg’, often described as actively seeking out patrons and profitable opportunities and getting by through innovation and resilience in order to achieve upward social mobility, will be explored in more nuance. Being a 'dreg man', carries a pejorative connotation and many of the young footballers see themselves as possessing a higher social status, and calling, than a street hustler operating on the margins of society, their everyday experience might be very similar.