Overview

Africans have long graced football fields around the world. The success of icons such as Samuel Eto'o, Didier Drogba and Mohamed Salah has fuelled the migratory projects of countless male youth across the continent. Using over a decade of ethnographic research, African football migration traces the historical, geographical and regulatory features of this migratory process. While a fortunate few do forge a successful career overseas, the book reveals how the vast majority experience involuntary immobility. Meanwhile others who are able to 'go outside' encounter truncated careers at the margins of the industry followed by precarious post-playing career lives. In unpacking these issues, African football migration offers fresh perspectives on the transnational strategies deployed by youth and young men striving to improve their life chances in post-colonial Africa, and the role that mobility, imagined and enacted, plays in these struggles.

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9781526120267

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Reviews

Shortlisted for the British Society of Sports History’s Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2023 'This discussion of a key element of the global labour market in contemporary sport manages to both straddle complex disciplinary boundaries - sociology, geography, and anthropology - to present a well historicised, sharply insightful analysis of football migration, mainly from West Africa, in the last two decades.' - Judges statement -- .

Shortlisted for the British Society of Sports History’s Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2023 Honourable Mention - North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Outstanding Book Award 2023 'This discussion of a key element of the global labour market in contemporary sport manages to both straddle complex disciplinary boundaries - sociology, geography, and anthropology - to present a well historicised, sharply insightful analysis of football migration, mainly from West Africa, in the last two decades.' - Judges statement 'Well-researched and meticulously written [...] Provides some much-needed oxygen to the study of African migration.' Jesper Bjarnesen, International Migration Review -- .

Shortlisted for the British Society of Sports History’s Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2023 Honourable Mention - North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Outstanding Book Award 2023 'This discussion of a key element of the global labour market in contemporary sport manages to both straddle complex disciplinary boundaries - sociology, geography, and anthropology - to present a well historicised, sharply insightful analysis of football migration, mainly from West Africa, in the last two decades.' - NASSS Outstanding Book Award 2023 Judges statement 'Well-researched and meticulously written [...] Provides some much-needed oxygen to the study of African migration.' Jesper Bjarnesen, International Migration Review ‘The book makes important contributions to football migration and African youth studies literature. It pioneers an integrated approach that analyses African football migration at the macro, meso and micro levels’. Ikechukwu Ejekwumadu, European Journal of Sport and Society 'Essential reading for those interested in the sociology, geography, management, and anthropology of sport.' Elizabeth White, H-Migration (H-Net Network on the global history of migration) 'Ultimately, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in migration, football, Africa, or the continued relationships between African states and European colonial rule and neocolonialism.' Atticus Williams, Fordham University, African Studies Quarterly, Volume 22, Issue 2|April 2024 -- .

Author Information

Paul Darby is a Reader in the Sociology of Sport at Ulster University James Esson is a Reader in Human Geography at Loughborough University Christian Ungruhe is a Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at Erasmus University Rotterdam

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