Paper short abstract:

Highly skilled migrants in the professional sports system (e.g. coaches) are privileged circular migrants, who remigrate after each contract change. The paper analyses the challenges of their integration and well-being.

Paper long abstract:

The sport successes of top athletes rest on the support of teams of highly skilled professionals (persons in the sports system). The presentation is based on ethnological field research (qualitative interviews, narratives about lived experiences) with coaches and health professionals from Croatia who have many years/decades of experience working in different football clubs and countries. Motivations for working abroad include high earnings, the possibility of professional development, and thus signing even more lucrative contracts, but also the experience of living in different countries. Considering that their employment contracts are fixed-term and that they are privileged circular migrants, this paper discusses the challenges of integration and their perception of well-being. Research shows that they are not integrated into the receiving society, but into the club and they live in a professional “bubble”. Often the head coach conditions the signing of a contract with the possibility to bring his team with him. Although these are privileged migrants, they often face emotional and social challenges. Depending on age, family circumstances, time of migration and place of employment, each remigration/change of club shows new integration challenges, but also transnational families, the emergence of the concept of having two homes, “sacrificing” partners’ careers, children’s social life, etc.