Paper Short Abstract:

This paper examines how young male west African migrants in Europe reflect on their dream of playing professional football for a living. Rather than succumbing to the “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) of professional sports and late neoliberal capitalism, or outright abandoning the dream of sport success and stardom, the young men redefine the meaning of a life worth living through migration and sport.

Paper Abstract:

Global football is saturated with narratives of dream and aspiration. International football academies take up aspirational names – “Right to Dream” in Ghana, “Aspire Academy” in Qatar – and wealthy football stars inspire cohorts of youth to pursue the sport. Transformed into a global business and market of football players, the football industry is encouraging countless west African young men – mostly, but not only, from underprivileged backgrounds – to chase elusive dreams of playing, migrating to Europe, and earning through the sport. The dreamers, however, are confronted with a competitive industry that demands young bodies and with restrictive border regimes that push them towards irregular migration routes, societal margins, and susceptibility to exploitation.

This paper examines the west African migrants’ reflections on the dream of playing football for a living, especially as the enticing possibilities of football careers start diminishing. It draws from recent interviews with west African football migrants in Europe (2024) and earlier ethnographic fieldwork on football migration aspirations in Cameroon (2014-2016) to analyze how elusive dreams are re-negotiated by the dreamers themselves. A key finding is that the young men do not simply consume and chase the dream of sport success and stardom, nor do they outright reject or abandon it. Rather, through migration and sport, they redefine the meaning of a life worth living. The paper examines the footballers’ reflections and trajectories to reveal how people transform meanings of a “good life” in the midst of “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) of late neoliberal capitalism.