Globalization or Internationalization? Foreign Footballers in the English League, 1946-95

Abstract

This article challenges the idea that globalization is an inexorable free market process that fundamentally changes the nature of economic competition. Using evidence on hiring practices from the English football league (1946-95) it presents a case study of a labour market where globalization might reasonably be expected. In finding that the market is characterized by a process of internationalization, the article goes on to show how this process is influenced by a range of economic, social and political factors that have distinctly national or British origins. More specifically, it argues that the recent expansion in overseas recruitment is shaped by the risk averse way in which employers deal with that which makes labour unique as a commodity: its variability and plasticity. Consequently, English clubs tend to draw heavily on those foreign sources that most resemble local sources in terms of climate, culture, language and style of football (for example, Scotland, Ireland, Australia and northern Europe, especially Scandinavia). Accordingly, the article concludes that radical notions of labour market globalization are fundamentally flawed since they fail to account for the ways in which labour market behaviour is socially embedded.