Migrant Athletes Research Articles

Міграція в спортивній боротьбі: аналіз виступів на Олімпійських Іграх 2024 в Парижі

Purpose: to analyze the achievements of migrant wrestlers at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Material and methods.The following methods are used in the research: analysis of scientific and methodical sources, analysis of the results of sportsmen's performances and methods of mathematical statistics. The study was conducted to analyze the number of migrant athletes, their results in competitions, as well as age and weight characteristics in each style of wrestling (women's wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling). The data is taken from the official website «United World of Wrestling» (https://unitedworldwrestling.org). The percentage of migrants, their average age, weight categories and places they occupied were analyzed, with further processing of statistical indicators to identify patterns in their performance. Results: the results of the study showed that 34 migrant athletes participated in the 2024 Olympic Games, with the largest number (24,0 %) observed in freestyle wrestling, while the figure was the lowest in women's wrestling at 2,1 %. The analysis also found that migrant athletes have an average age of 29,5 years, indicating their experience.Almost a third of them won prizes, in particular, 8,8 % became winners, and 29,4 % won prizes. Despite the high achievements, 35,3 % of the athletes ranked 10 and below, which indicates a wide variety of results among migrants. A comparison with previous studies confirmed the tendency of athletes to change their citizenship after the peak of their career. Migrant athletes aged 24-27 make up the largest group, indicating their strategy to achieve international success after achieving the best results in their careers. Conclusions. Migrant athletes participating in the 2024 Olympic Games showed a high level of results, especially in freestyle wrestling. Their participation and success confirm that changing citizenship is an important strategy for further achievements in international competitions, especially after the peak period of a sports career.

Coping within the interstices of the neoliberal sports market: Using de Certeau to analyse the migration of African mixed martial arts fighters in South Africa

This paper focuses on African migrant mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters enrolled in the Extreme Fighting Championship (EFC), a leading MMA organization established in 2009 in South Africa. It highlights their precarious work and living conditions, which are counterbalanced by the promise of real but rare career possibilities. Drawing from Michel de Certeau’s conceptual framework – notably his concepts of strategies, tactics and lieu propre (proper place) – we analyse what it is to struggle, cope and sometimes thrive, as a migrant fighter in South Africa. We rely on 61 semi-structured interviews with 35 professional EFC fighters from four Sub-Saharan countries who migrated to South Africa. Our results highlight the various tactics – which rely on social networks, their bodily stature, fighting skills and EFC media presence – that fighters mobilize to cope with the hardships of migratory status and unstable work conditions. We thus reveal the dialectic power relations that tie fighters to promoters and contribute to understanding migrants’ work conditions in the neoliberal sports market. Our research highlights the need to move away from migrant athletes’ caricatured representations as silent and passive victims unaware of the mechanisms of oppression to a more dynamic understanding of power relations that takes coping mechanisms and career trajectories into account.

Analysis of Factors of Sports Migration and the Effectiveness of Competitive Activity of Football Players

The purpose of the work: determine the ways of correcting the training process based on taking in to account the influence of sports migration factors on the training of highly qualified football players. Material and methods. To assess the impact of factors of sports migration on the effectiveness of competitive activity, the indicators of the competitive activity of football players of the national team of Ukraine in 16 official games during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 seasons. Methods of research. Analysis, generalization and systematization of data from scientific and methodological literary sources and the “Internet”, pedagogical observations, content analysis of competition regulations (based on the materials of the official FIFA; UEFA; UAF sites), analysis of performance indicators of competitive activity; method of expert evaluations; methods of mathematical statistics. Results. The 2020-2021 season: in 62,5% of official games, higher indicators were recorded for football players of the first group (“migrants” and “naturalized” athletes), the range of indicators – from 58.33% to 77.50%. At the same time, statistically significant differences (25.00%) were recorded in 2 games. In one game, higher indicators were recorded for football players of the first group (“migrants” and “naturalized” athletes) and, in one game, higher indicators were recorded for football players of the second group (athletes who were born in Ukraine are national athletes of the UAF and participate in UPL competitions). The 2021-2022 season: in 62.5% of official games, higher indicators were recorded for football players of the first group (“migrants” and “naturalized” athletes), the range of indicators – from 50.01% to 74.16%. No statistically significant differences were recorded. The comparative effectiveness of football players of the first and second groups was 46.15% and 53.85%, respectively. Conclusion. This state of affairs indicates the need to correct the modern system of multi-year improvement of highly qualified football players based on the development and formation of technologies for the direct training of migrant athletes for official international competitions.

Being a Migrant Athlete in Turkey: What Motivates Them and What Their Problems

With globalization and the commercialization of sport, there has been an increase in the mobility of migrant athletes worldwide. In parallel to this, there is also an increase in the number of migrant athletes in Turkey. In this respect, this research aims to investigate the motivations and problems experienced by the increasing number of migrant athletes in Turkey. The study group of the research, which was planned in a phenomenological design, consisted of a total of twenty (20) migrant athletes: nine (9) from the football branch, six (6) from the basketball branch, and five (5) from the volleyball branch. Personal information forms and semi-structured interview forms were used as data collection tools. In the research, face-to-face and one-to-one interviews were conducted with migrant athletes. The data were analyzed using the content analysis method. According to the research findings, three typologies affecting the motivation of migrant athletes to be in Turkey emerged. These typologies are ambitionist, mercenary, and settler. It was determined that living in a new society and culture in the context of intra-sport problems and integration in intra-sport problems. As a result, the motivations of immigrant athletes to be in Turkey are mostly ambitionist and mercenary, and they face more problems in their lives outside of sports.

Meaning, trust, and belonging: Exploring the factors that foster elite forced migrant athletes’ growth

Background and purposeResearchers have highlighted elite refugee athletes’ acculturation and sport-related challenges upon transitioning into host country sports systems. Using a strength-based approach, we aimed to broaden this view through exploring the internal and external factors that have fostered refugee athletes’ abilities to find meaning and growth following their transitions into a national sports system. MethodologyData collection began with an arts-based drawing activity which was then discussed in a conversational interview. Fourteen (n = 11 male, 3 female) national and international refugee athletes participated. The interviews were analyzed using a reflexive thematic analysis, a form of qualitative analysis used to derive commonalities that connect athletes’ experiences. The data is represented through polyphonic vignettes (narrative featuring multiple perspectives) to safeguard athletes’ anonymity whilst showcasing varying perspectives. ResultsAthletes were at various phases of growth at the time of the interviews. The primary internal factor that facilitated growth was responsibility to find and pursue meaning. External factors of trust and belonging, actualized through supporting elite athletes’ personal differences, were external factors that fostered their abilities to find meaning. ConclusionElite refugee athletes’ growth occurred at the nexus of individual responsibility, trusting relationships, and inclusive sport environments. The findings inform individual and environmental growth-based interventions for current and future elite athletes who face varying adversities within their sports contexts.

Attitude to migration of Syrian student-athletes

The problem of sports migration is considered as a new direction of interdisciplinary research. The purpose of the study was to study the attitudes of Syrian student athletes towards migration in the field of sports. The study was conducted among undergraduate students of 1-4 years in the faculty of "Physical culture" Tishrin University, Lattakia, Syria. A total of 34 students took part in the study. involved in different sports. The author's questionnaire was used as a method. The results of the study revealed that Syrian student athletes are quite informed about the migration of athletes, since everyone knows migrant athletes. Data have been obtained regarding which motives for migration in sports they consider the most significant, the opinion of students about the difficulties of migration and the strategies necessary to overcome them. The data may be relevant for specialists dealing with the problem of migration in sports.

‘Just another world’: an interpretive biography of the cultural transition of two West African footballers in Germany

This paper explored the cultural and career transition experiences of two elite West African footballers in Germany using the approach of interpretive biography. By analysing data collected through semi-­structured interviews, the players’ narratives revealed a range of experiences emerging at different temporal points or life domains. The experiences included the psychosocial states of pre-transition, the challenges associated with language and weather, the increased demands of professionalism, the challenge of adapting to a new environment and routines of daily life, the superficiality of relationships and the attendant loneliness. It however, advanced literature by demonstrating how an African footballer in Europe may locate self and progress career within the European football economy and how a high-status African migrant athlete may use his social position to characterise self in a certain manner so as to exercise the right to belong.

What should I wear? The choice of the nationality of migrant medalists in athletics in Tokyo 2020

Competitions in athletics at the Olympic Games are between athletes, not nations. The national character is present through the use of national symbols and the medals won by the competitors are counted in the table as national. Most of the competitors who reached the podium in the athletics disputes in the 2020 Olympic edition were migrant athletes and/or those who held plurinational ancestry. This article presents those life trajectories to discuss the criteria for defining nationality adopted by different athletes. This qualitative study, based on research carried out using official data from the International Olympic Committee and with the support of information obtained from journalistic sources, in addition to theoretical analysis. As conclusions, it appears that there is a relationship between migration and sports phenomena and that the definition of nationalities follows individual but also social criteria.

Moving Away: Intra-National Migration Experiences of Brazilian Men Elite Futsal Players During Youth

Migration experiences are common for athletes, especially in team sports. Moving from home to a recruiting sport club has become an indispensable career investment. This is also the case in Brazilian futsal, where many developing players move to more promising clubs within the country. This process is often challenging, but little researched. The purpose of this article is to investigate 13 Brazilian men elite futsal players’ intra-national migration experiences during their youth. We aim to: provide insight into what factors allowed players to invest in a futsal career through migration; demonstrate the challenges young players faced during their migration; and describe how they adapted to the futsal context they had moved to. We use a Bourdieusian framework to examine young futsal players’ disposition to intra-national migration and the influence of capitals on their integration in the receiving places. A thematic analysis allowed us to identify that: Players’ disposition to migration was shaped by their families’ habitus and illusio related to futsal; some of the reported issues could have been avoided if clubs had provided more efficient support to young migrant athletes; and families and networks (social capital) were key for players being able to adapt to the new futsal context.

Welcome to Brazil: An Analysis of the Migration of Foreign Players to Brazilian Basketball

This study aimed to analyze the migration of foreign athletes to compete in the New Basketball Brazil (NBB). This descriptive study was used for documentary research, and data were collected from the National Basketball League (LNB), referring to all seasons of the competition. The results point to a gradual increase in the number of foreign players until the 2013/14 season, after a slight decline. It was also observed that Minas was the club that received the most foreigners and that counted on them in all the seasons. The country with the highest number of migrant athletes in the NBB was the United States. It was concluded that the pattern of migration of foreigners in Brazilian basketball is predominantly continental and that the coming of many Americans to Brazil can be explained by the fact that the United States is the mother country of many players whose quality is superior to their domestic demand. That leads these players to leave the world's largest basketball league, the NBA, corroborating the reality of other countries' leagues around the world.

Migrant athletes and the transformation of physical capital. Spatial and temporal dynamics in West African footballers’ approaches to post-careers

For many young people from the Global South football labour migration to Europe fuels hopes of social mobility. However, the long-term value of an international career is uncertain. Despite the success of a few migrant role models, professional careers in Europe often go along with a number of social and economic challenges for migrants that hinder sufficient preparations for post-career life courses. In this article, we focus on retiring male West African footballers in Scandinavia and their challenges to transform accumulated physical capital into other forms of social, economic and cultural capital, such as financial resources, social relations, educational assets, language skills and rights in form of long-term residence permits or citizenship in Europe. By foregrounding the temporal and spatial dimensions of the accumulation and transformation of capital, we depict the relational character of its various forms (social, cultural and economic capital) and their changing value in the different localities of players’ origins and destinations and at different points in time. Hereby, we show how processes of capital transformation are ambivalent experiences which, nevertheless, point to problematic structures in the global football business that disadvantage migrant players and their attempts to reproduce social mobility after career ending.

Munene Franjo Mwaniki, The Black Migrant Athlete: Media, Race, and the Diaspora in Sports. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp. 270. $50.00 (cloth).

Munene Franjo Mwaniki, The Black Migrant Athlete: Media, Race, and the Diaspora in Sports. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp. 270. $50.00 (cloth).

Development and first application of the athlete adaptation inventory: An exploratory study

Geographic mobility has become an essential part of athletes’ career development and athletic migration is rapidly increasing. However, research on psychological aspects of athletes’ transnational mobility is lacking in the literature. In this study we describe the development of the Athlete Adaptation Inventory (AAI) and examine its first application in a sample of 143 professional and amateur elite migrant athletes. In summary, results indicate that cultural adaptation challenges were perceived as slightly difficult. However, female athletes reported more difficulties than male athletes in the sport domain, whereas male and team sport athletes reported more challenges in the non-sport domain compared to female and individual sport athletes. Furthermore, difficulties encountered in everyday activities of the target destination significantly predicted challenges adapting to the sport environment, whereas gender contributed to a much lesser degree. To explore diverse ways in which cultural transitions are experienced and to provide adequate support, sport practitioners are encouraged to include this scale in their work with migrating athletes.

Sports migrants in ‘Central’ and ‘Eastern’ Europe: beyond the existing narratives

Abstract Outside of Europe’s top football leagues, migrant athletes are often subjected to short-term contracts, poor housing conditions, isolation and the ever-present risk of premature career termination due to injuries. This paper is part of a current multi-sited ethnography on Brazilian futsal and football migrants in Central and Eastern Europe. It is based on life-history interviews with migrant players and uses transnational lenses to approach sports migrants’ movements in these regions. The study conceptualises futsal and football as an ethnographic continuum. Football and futsal players participate in similar processes of early professionalisation. However, at the ages of 16 or 17, athletes become professionals in either football or futsal, seeking specialisation. The role that borders, families, injuries and emotions play in the lives of sports migrants are also analysed. The current study presents a diversified narrative of contemporary sports migration movements.

The Black Migrant Athlete: Media, Race, and the Diaspora in Sports

The Black Migrant Athlete: Media, Race, and the Diaspora in Sports

“I Just Go on Wi-Fi”: Imagining Worlds Through Professional Basketball Migrants’ Deployment of Information and Communication Technology

The connection between athletes and technology has developed in recent years, with the focus on how lives are augmented and presented through this relationship. Building on previous reflections concerning the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to support the sometimes fractious experiences of sport migration, we suggest a need to develop our understandings of migrant athletes’ use of ICT by interrogating socially-embedded processes driving its usage. In so doing, we draw on 18 semistructured interviews with professional basketball migrants based (at the time) in the United Kingdom but whose seasonal work moves them frequently across the globe. We explore these participants’ experiences through the lens of Appadurai’s model of scapes and disjuncture. With this framework we explore themes of negotiation, need, expectation, and barriers. Consequently, we propose expanding how we understand migrant athletes’ relationships with technology.

Motivators and Problems of Being a Global Migrant (Outsource) Soccer Labor in Turkey: A Preliminary Study

The aim of this study was to reveal the motivators and problems of soccer players that pursue their professional careers in Turkey. In this qualitative research, convenience sampling and criterion sampling, which are kinds of nonrandom sampling methods was used to determine the participants. Eight male soccer players from the Genclerbirligi Soccer Team who were complied with the research criteria, voluntarily participated in the study. The demographic information form and semi-structured interview form were used as data collection tools. All interviews were recorded by audio and video recording devices. Data was analyzed by content analysis. The findings showed that; this study was supported the "mercenary", "ambiotis" and "nomadic cosmopolitan" items, which are in typologies that motivates athletes to migrate to a host country. In addition, language and cultural differences were the main problems for migrant athletes. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that besides the items in the typologies, "positive information" can facilitate the migration of athletes to a host country. Furthermore, it expressed the importance of inquiry on the cultural structure of the host country for migrant athletes, in order to minimize negative influences of problems.

Policies for naturalisation of foreign-born athletes: Qatar and Turkey in comparison

ABSTRACT This article investigates why, how, and under which conditions countries naturalise foreign-born athletes. Such nationality transfers are an under-researched topic in academic literature on citizenship and on elite sport. This can be explained by macro data which shows that naturalisations are a negligible factor to explain the overall, historical performance of countries in international sport. However, what makes the current work relevant is that there are some outliers that have recently made excessive use of foreign-born athletes on their national teams, many of whom have no prior connections to their new homes. This research sheds light on the Middle East, a region that has recently been at the forefront when it comes to nationality transfers of migrant athletes, by discussing naturalisation policy in Qatar and Turkey. The motives of naturalised athletes and national federations, the role of governments in transferring nationality to migrant athletes, as well as the rules and regulations of international federations and the International Olympic Committee concerning nationality transfers are discussed. Naturalisations can be explained in regards to low participation rates in national sport and the desire of both countries to gain international prestige through sport. Athletes switch nationalities for economic and sports-related reasons: it is easier for athletes to qualify for international competitions when representing weaker sporting nations. A distinction between both cases is that Qatar only grants temporary passports to many immigrant athletes, a practice that deserves scrutiny by international federations, while Turkey provides naturalised talents with full citizenship.

Hockey’s Significant Others: Canadian Newspaper Coverage of Elite Migrant Athletes in the 1980s and 1990s

Peter Stastny and Petr Nedved were among the most famous Eastern European defectors to play in the National Hockey League (NHL); they not only had success in the NHL but also represented the Canadian men’s national hockey team in international tournaments. Meanwhile, the son of Canadian hockey legend Bobby Hull, Brett Hull, opted to play for the US national team and became a threat to Canadian hockey in the 1990s. This study examines how these three athletes were represented in Canadian newspaper coverage. Specifically, the stories of Stastny and Nedved served as a means for Canadians to differentiate themselves from the former Czechoslovakia and Eastern Bloc. The success of Hull and the US national team, on the other hand, served to threaten Canada’s dominant status in hockey.

“If my family is okay, I’m okay”: Exploring relational processes of cultural transition

The experiences of athletes who relocate from their home country have recently been in the centre of attention in sport psychology. The present study examined how migrant athletes construct meanings of a new reality and negotiate their life choices within a matrix of relationships and various cultural narratives of sport, career, and family life. We explore the stories of two transnational athletes in very different settings: a professional athlete moving from Western Africa to Scandinavia, and an amateur elite athlete accompanying his professional migrant partner moving from a Scandinavian country to a cosmopolitan Asian capital. Both athletes participated in in-depth life story interviews spanning three sessions, which enabled them to connect the past, present, and future in subjectively meaningful ways. Athletes’ migration narratives were explored through the prism of the relational cultural paradigm, and then analysed with respect to three temporal phases of Cultural Transition Model: pre-transition; acute cultural adaptation; and sociocultural adaptation. For both participants, relational contexts were crucial for the successful navigation of cultural transition and transformation of meaning in sport practices. Both athletes constructed their transitions within transnational space, where cultural adaptation was an open-ended process involving multiple belongings and anticipated future mobilities.